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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24766999">Of Jedi and Cloud-Riders</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie'>softly_speaking_valkyrie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Love Across the Stars [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Fingering, Anal Play, And They Were Both Tops, Angst and Tragedy, Bittersweet Ending, Body Worship, Canon Compliant, Clone Wars, Eventual Ahsoka Tano/Enfys Nest, F/F, Fingering, Flirting, Forbidden Romance, Holding Hands, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Love, Love Confessions, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Neck Kissing, Pining, Pining Enfys, Plot, Porn With Plot, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Rimming, Romance, Shower Sex, Slow Build, Slow Burn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:20:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>34,073</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24766999</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After a small reprieve at the Jedi Temple heading into the third and final year of the Clone Wars, Ahsoka rejoins Anakin for the Invasion of Bakura, a coordinated assault with Master Luminara and her own apprentice. Ahsoka and Barriss continue to hide their attractions for each other from their masters, taking on a mission away from the main invasion plan to rescue a group of captives from the Separatists. As Ahsoka risks her life to save a nine-year-old Enfys Nest from the lightsabers of Asajj Ventress, the Togruta could never foresee that nineteen years later, the same woman would find her again, hopelessly in love with the memory of a Jedi more beautiful than any other woman in her life...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barriss Offee/Ahsoka Tano, Enfys Nest/Ahsoka Tano</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Love Across the Stars [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756282</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Bakura</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hiddenfaithy/gifts">Hiddenfaithy</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/UndrinkableSmoothie/gifts">UndrinkableSmoothie</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A requested Rare Pair/Crack Ship of Ahsoka x Enfys from a friend, so I decided to fluff it up a little bit and add it to my 'Ahsoka sleeps with all the ladies and so does Rey' series. The first two chapters will be Barriss and Ahsoka getting a little spicy in their forbidden romance during the Clone Wars as they save baby Enfys, and then we'll skip right to Post-Rebels but beginning Pre-Rogue One (hopefully with some cameos) for when Enfys is about 28...</p><p>When things get good Enfys will be about 28 and Ahsoka will be 37. They gonna be cute so stay tuned! I'm back in Star Wars Rare Pair hell just like when Phasrey started XD</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Snips looked to her master, Anakin looking parallel ad down a few inches to give her an all too familiar look – almost three years of this now, almost three galactic rotations of moving from planet to planet and either pacifying it of enemy forces or liberating it of them in a matter of weeks. There was no time for delays in this hot an engagement. The Separatists held no quarter and so many times there had been horrible days where the governing warlord (they were no better than the name and Ahsoka had come to call the enemy generals and admirals as such) would move civilians into the warzone. The early offensive on Ryloth still rattled her over two years on now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Relax, Snips,” the regular puckish rogue-like voice of her master entered Ahsoka’s ears, setting her a little at ease. Rex was in front of them too, looking from his commander to her and nodding in his Mk II helmet. She was fond of Rex, fonder of him than of any, which said a lot due to her love of all the 501st. “Rex, we could use some air.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, General,” Rex nodded to Skywalker as faithfully as he always did. The Captain bunched his fist, knocking on the bulkhead doors of the gunship. Ahsoka felt colder immediately, wishing she had worn her long-sleeved jumpsuit Padawan robes instead of her chest bindings and sleeves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wind was also gale-force outside when the doors opened, revealing the clones and the rest of the aerial chaos of the battle of Bakura – the trench-like planet was a hellscape in a storm, and the clouds on the horizon looked ominous, to say the least. Yet, to warm Ahsoka in her chest, looking out at the nightfall of the surface with luminous plants and flora littering the canyon tops, the Togruta Padawan could see a faint ember of lime-green in the form of two dots on another transport gunship. The smallest of the pair waved, Ahsoka could see the wiggling smaller green dot in a sea of navy and darkened black. Ahsoka’s eyes lit up a little, Anakin bumping into her as he noticed the exchange. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Looks like someone’s happy you made it back in time for the invasion, Snips,” Skyguy smiled, flashing his Padawan with a cool wink. As always, even in the treacherous skies of some of the more dangerous planets in the galaxy, Anakin kept his cool and roguish demeanour the whole time – nothing phased him ever, and Ahsoka thought her mentor was the most untouchable and impressive peak of healthy masculinity and fatherhood she’d ever met. The only other man that could impress her more was her paternal saint – Master Plo Koon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t tell me that Barriss would be along, Master...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure I did. I told you Master Luminara and Master Allie were backing us up on this one, Ahsoka,” Anakin grinned, Rex giving his attention to the conversation. The men looked at each other, The clone occasionally checking his mission clock and commlink. Once more he nodded to Anakin, who was perplexingly smug and looking away from his perturbed apprentice. Something in his senses must have told him she was offset and with a slight downer on her mood. “Aren’t you going to wave back? I thought you and Barriss were friends after Geonosis...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” Ahsoka lied, her arms dropping from their fold as she smacked her lips and gawked at her teacher. “Did she say something? I thought we Jedi were supposed to keep a tight control on our emotions. That’s what Master Obi-Wan keeps reminding me of.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another smug grin formed across Anakin’s lips; there had been so many times he’d had conflicting ideals to his former instructor. Master Kenobi had also proven to be made of many leaves and hats himself. When Ahsoka spoke of emotion, Skywalker could not help but think of the Mandalorian Duchess – the look they had shared on the envoy ship to Coruscant that once, Anakin hadn’t seen anything like it in his Master. It reminded him of himself. “Master?” Ahsoka repeated in his ear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Skywalker jumped a little, a faint explosion of anti-air fire deep within the conflict some leagues from them. It caught his attention more than Ahsoka did – they were approaching the hot zone. “Easy, Snips.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Figures, I’m gone for shore leave for a week and the whole feel of command has changed...” She mused, finally waving to Barriss across the night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anakin had widened his stance and had his hand comfortingly on the high of her back, feeling tension there deeply-rooted. She felt his senses reading her like a Holocron, perking and jolting as she felt his mind touch her own for but a very brief moment; they hadn’t been so connected as master and student in what felt like an age and suddenly for the very faintest trace of the time she could perceive his senses as her own. The sharp brisk of the wind rustling the cuff of his neck, blowing the bob of his chocolate-brown hair around his furrowed forehead. The retention and focus of the spark of battle came to the forefront of her attention, the distinct smell of brimstone and shrapnel lingering close in the air. How had she managed to feel so far away from him in understanding? All of Anakin’s form and spirit felt all new to her again, making the tip of her head-tail sway and shiver a little until his hand left the space between her shoulder blades. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Skyguy...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eyes up, Snips! Come on! The heat is on,” Anakin was yelling at her as the precipice of the air battle caught up to them. “Rex, ready the men, we’re airborne in three!” The commander barked at the blue trooper. Rex nodded again with a sharp and harsh ‘yes, sir!’ before huddling with the rest of the attack group. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ahsoka was suddenly mesmerised by the outside and the glowing flora compiling into streaks of something between pastel and neon streaks of light all along their approach vector. The formation of the rest of the invading gunships created a celestial wing of muted red and white of patriotic Republic colours, with tiny dots of shrouded green a few kilometres away from the Togruta’s position. Barriss was focusing on her from the side of Luminara Unduli and from between the space of their protective gunships came zooming a flat and tempered Headhunter Starfighter. The sub-orbital bombardment must have begun and now a lot of Master Allie’s space force was descending on the Bakuran canon fields. Ahsoka had a mental image of the far-flung moon as they had approached it from space. The bridge of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Endurance</span>
  </em>
  <span> had given her an ample view – her first nervous engagement from resting her feet at the temple for a week and a half. Ahsoka hadn’t thought it’d change her perspective or feelings on conflict all that much, but any time away from the side of her master and the pace of liberation had the tendency to calm her heart to a sluggish and peaceful pace. Now, with the roar of the Z-95’s thrusters burning a combative hole in her ears like normal, she felt as if she’d been shocked into a harrowing dream. Her fingers were trembling next to the hilts of her lightsabers as she noticed and sensed Offee watching her again from the gap.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Are you okay?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She could hear Barriss’s calming and relaxing voice, the slightly clipped tone of a prim and proper apprentice shrouding around her mind. Ahsoka closed her eyes, focusing on them as the howl of the windswept Headhunter passed and the interceptor shot away from the formation of transporting gunships. The whole world seemed to open up to Ahsoka – Barriss’s sapphire-blue eyes became a lighthouse to guide Ahsoka’s attention and of course, her secluded and secretive attractions. She could never forget Geonosis, nor could she ever forget their mission together on Munalist. Barriss had become a deep and sensual part of her life and her heart. She was aware of Anakin beside and around her, deadly careful to hide her love for the Mirialan away deep at the back and base of her mind; she would never betray them, not even to Anakin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something about Skyguy had always told Ahsoka that he would not understand the love she bore for Barriss Offee. Looking to her, she could see Luminara next to her, a stance similar to Anakin. That pair had looked similar and similar in Ahsoka’s eye the more they were mentoring Ahsoka and Barriss together this side of the galaxy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A Delta-7B </span>
  <em>
    <span>Aethersprite</span>
  </em>
  <span>-class light interceptor in a vibrant glacial blue (difficult to make out in the light-dark of the night but illuminated by the equally boreal of the canyon terrain) came into space the Headhunter had previously occupied. Within the cockpit, Ahsoka could make out Master Stass Allie, looking to Luminara and then upward to Skywalker.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ahsoka heard over her mentor’s commlink. “Skywalker... Barriers are falling. The Separatists have bridges with missile batteries all over the canyon basins and I’m spotting spider droids the whole ride into the power generators. They’ve ray-shielded the area off, there’s no way to reach the soft spots from the air...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not to worry, Master Allie. I’ll go with Commander Gree and ensure the generators are destroyed,” Ahsoka heard Master Unduli respond in a voice riddled with a protocol. She looked to Anakin for a response, but her teacher gave nothing away as he let her listen. “Skywalker, can you take care of the bridge encampments to clear the landing zone?” Luminara asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Skyguy smirked. “Actually Master, that was my initial idea. I’ve got my gunships ready for a bombing run. We can take care of the missiles and meet you at the generators...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There's more, Generals,” Rex interrupted, joining the rally from the front of the gunship hold. Echo was with him, and Fives behind the pair. The latter of the ARC Troopers gave Ahsoka a faithful nod, a debt for her saving him in the culmination on Munalist. She, him, Echo, and Barriss had been the rear incursion on a delicate mission at the time and the conflict had cemented a sisterly and brotherly bond between the pair since. “Echo has located lifeform readings in one of the holding facilities in a nearby canyon... General Skywalker those prisoners number in the high half-hundreds...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anakin was stuck, caught between conflict and liberty; Ahsoka saw him bite his lip in a pained conundrum. It was Barriss who spoke next, her voice joining the commlink exchange. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ahsoka and I can deviate to the holding block while you take out the droid hard spots, Master...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Barriss is right Skyguy,” Ahsoka immediately followed. “Let us take Fives and Echo and a squad of troopers. We can be in and out in no time at all,” she requested, her voice needing and eager to get her feet wet saving people quickly. Anakin still didn’t look convinced, and Luminara would be less so knowing her hardy nature. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I agree with the Padawans... We can’t leave those people, Skywalker,” Master Allie broke the tense silence. Master Junda and her apprentice are inbound as we speak, they can pick them up. Get them in and out with a single squad...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anakin’s face twitched, his own tension rising. “Alright!” He barked at the commlink. Ahsoka sensed emotion bubbling to her own surface as well as his. There was a sudden rift from her desire to leave his side and his disagreement to let her go at all. His soft but now harsh blue eyes turned to her, ignoring the rest of the masters; Rex caught his glance next. “Rex I need you here – Fives and Echo, grab five men to assist the Padawans in their crusade for the holding blocks. No more than five!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me take Jesse and Tup, they’re your best guys that aren’t ARCs!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Which is all the more reason why I need them if you’re taking Fives and Echo, Padawan,” Anakin almost spat at her, his ire rising with a little vigour as he really demonstrated his opposition to her plan. “Master Luminara, requesting permission to shift to your gunship... The Padawans can take mine,” he spoke into the commlink, the rustle of his fair head of commandeering hair less handsome and more obnoxious now. It was if he reviled her for changing his strategy now – but wasn’t this exactly what he would do?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stass Allie moved her interceptor lower as Luminara’s gunship got closer – the small face of Barriss so far away came closer into view as Anakin shunned Ahsoka, filling her senses with regret. “Master... I’m sorry for altering your plan...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is your call Ahsoka; you and Barriss have this mission now – you wanted it. Don’t give up on your actions, haven’t I told you that already?” He spoke to her, a condescending sprinkle to his tone but genuine care and compassion driving his words. A bridge extended in the form of a ramp, almost connecting the two gunships. Some of the more basic clones filed out of the hold and into the increasingly tight space of Unduli’s ship. Barriss hopped over with a single clone in the white and green of the 41st Elite Corps; Ahsoka knew the markers on his heavy armour as Draa, a rocket trooper from Geonosis. He’d thankfully not been one of the ones on the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Consular</span>
  </em>
  <span>-class with the hive problem. As she noticed Draa, Ahsoka saw the sinister look Barriss had had that day in the flashes of her face as she smiled stepping aboard. Anakin hopped from the gunship Ahsoka was now commanding to by Luminara’s side. “Don’t make a strategy or a plan you don’t want to see through. Feel, Ahsoka, don’t think – use your instincts Padawan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I won’t let you down, Skyguy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For the record, I would like to express that I do not agree with this detour. The droids will be less of a problem if we hit them hard and fast rather than dividing our forces – and it could be a trap, Master Skywalker,” Ahsoka could hear Master Luminara tell her mentor, the soft curvature of her brow furrowing as she looked at Anakin taller than she. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They need us...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I trust our Padawans...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rex was the last to go, giving Ahsoka a swift salute as the gunships parted. The next time the Padawans would see their masters would be probably at the end of the skirmish for the landing zone when Master Junda fetched them. Fives stepped to the hatch leading to the cockpit and banged on it with his fist; the blast shield doors slid closed once again and the coverings of the slits in them sealed shut, attaining soft seal. Emergency lighting came on swiftly and Ahsoka felt Barriss already reaching for her hand, reminding her they were together again like Munalist with an affectionate squeeze of her hand. The Togruta looked to her left, seeing the red-flashed paler green face of the Mirialan that mirrored her age. Their eyes conveyed a greeting their arms and lips could not with Fives, Echo and the five other troopers surrounding them. It had been probably two months, the cold expanse of space separating them and now they were stealing precious moments away together on the heels of warfare for the second time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ahsoka wanted to feel guilty, wanted to feel ashamed for finding herself smiling that Barriss was with her and they had a task to save people together. But she couldn’t find it in herself to not clutch back at Barriss’s hand and give the warm crook of a giddy smile. Deep down she wanted to tell Barriss how much she’d missed her, how happy she was to feel the warmth of her palm clasped so tightly against her own. The rush of adrenaline finally hit her system as the gunship swayed away from the rest of the invasion party. Ahsoka felt the bones of it rattle with added speed and she reached for the canopy rails to hold on for stability. None of the troopers were looking at them – Fives gave her a knowing nod and huddled them together to look at the prison layout.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the gunship jolted to the side, Ahsoka deliberately let go of the railings and shifted her body to turn. Landing in Barriss’s frame, she called out to her with her senses. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Barriss...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The other Padawan gasped, Ahsoka’s face not halting as she landed in her space, and just as the Mirialan was about to call her companion’s name, Ahsoka stole her kiss in a flash of movement, covered up by the act of falling into her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s good to see you...</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>The spindly droids that guarded Enfys and her mother had red markings on their otherwise unblemished and slightly cream-coloured chassis. They didn’t move; not as in walking and talking to each other apart from reports and changes in guard duty (she had not thought that the droids of the Separatist armies needed to change shifts), but as in they didn’t seem to flinch or to move at all. She knew they were made of the metal, that they were not living, she had seen droids in countless multitudes before, but these metal menaces seemed, so much more inorganic and inhuman. Their eyes were some of the worst features, her little and young mind had decided. To her nine-year-old depictions, Enfys Nest saw the droids as abominations, and couldn’t wait until she could make them explode. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her mother gathered her close to her person as different kinds of footsteps strutted closer to the holding block. Plenty more of their family and acquaintances began to shudder and move in their tattered clothing and otherwise detention scrubs; they were iron-willed, but still scared of the state of war rattling their borders. A lot of them weren’t fit to fight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the door to the rest of the base slid open, a totally different frame walked inside – a woman of pure white flesh and purple robes. Young Enfys couldn’t tell what species she was but knew the woman to totally not be human like herself. She looked at her own much smaller hand in relation to the tall mistress of dark colours and saw familiar strength in the woman’s hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the woman’s belt, Enfys saw two bladeless hilts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Why didn’t they have blades? What use would they be without the sharp steel or cortosis of a normal weapon? Enfys consulted the history modules with the pictures at school from a while ago and couldn’t remember seeing a weapon like that before, and she was the best in her class in warfare and history.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She didn’t think of anything as she wandered closer to the ray-shield of the holding cell, hands touching the hard laser wall in front of her, beyond it and tinted even more white was the mistress rattling off orders to the mechanical wardens. She pointed to all the droids, forcing them out of the room and into the corridors – Enfys didn’t listen, her attention enthralled on the bladeless hilts at the woman’s belt. She also didn’t notice the woman walking closer until she crouched down in front of Enfys, startling her mother. Enfys felt her Mama at her flank but saw the white-skinned woman hold out her hand and prevent Mama from advancing ever closer to Nest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A curious child often meets attention from where she least wants to find it...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Leave her alone!” Mama harkened, startling the other prisoners.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mom..?” Enfys felt herself saying, but didn’t take her attention away from the controlling and obviously powerful woman. To her nine-year-old eyes and intuitive mind, Enfys did not see the alien woman as scary, only deeply curious, an oddity to her engagement. “What... What are those?” She felt herself compelled to ask, pointing through the ray-shield at the woman’s odd swords. Swords without blades, without pointy ends to stab her foes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The alien woman smiled, reaching for one of her hilts as there came a thunderous blast from outside of the holding cell room. Enfys could hear the sound of blasters firing off from behind the woman standing up now. She kept her eyes on her and the weapon in her hand. “If you wait a moment, child, I’m sure I can give you a demonstration...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you ever seen a lightsaber in action before? Few children your age have even given the times,” she told Enfys, and the redhead youngling found herself shaking her head, still a little enamoured with the woman’s hands and movements. She hadn’t seen hands as powerful as this woman’s before – something exhumed from her bodice that Enfys couldn’t tell its alignment. There was something evil, something dark, and something severely misunderstood. Baby Enfys Nest couldn’t help but feel identified in the woman’s rough and seductive exterior. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door to the rest of the base flew open and in tumbled two more women – they were younger than the Separatist mistress, but both were different and alien even compared to her white skin. The first had orange flesh, and tentacles, even tails coming from around her beautiful face. Behind her stood a green-skinned girl, clad in navy blue wrappings. Enfys became mesmerised all over again – the woman in white and purple was illustrious and regal, and the athletic girl barrelling in against her was simply celestial. Who was she? </span>
  <em>
    <span>What</span>
  </em>
  <span> was she? Was she a Togruta? Enfys remembered studying them, and the girl behind her was a Mirialan, somehow more humanoid – one of her classmates were the same, she recognised the facial diamond patterns. Looking between them she discovered white markings on the Togruta’s orange face; they were equally as beautiful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Figures we’d find </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> here... Ventress,” the Togruta girl snarled from the door. She pulled out similar but straighter hilts from at her own belt, and from their tips ignited two blades of pure and luminous light, splendid light. One was green and the other yellow, Enfys was stunned by their brightness. “Put them down and let the prisoners go, the more Jedi are on the way...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You won’t make it out of here, Sith... Dooku won’t save you here against us,” the Mirialan girl continued. Enfys’s attention in rapture fled from the two younger girls to the regal woman in purple. She pulled out her other hilt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good to know Skywalker sent his meddling apprentice and her sidekick to bring me in... I was beginning to get worried I’d actually have to strain myself,” the woman named Ventress taunted, both her blades of laser light igniting into a sinister red. She reeled back and held them each at either side. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They collided in a flash of cleansing and dazzling light. Enfys managed to notice the Mirialan igniting her own blue laser sword before red hit green and yellow and the three women began to tussle all over the room. The display with just like Enfys had studied and seen in depictions in her classes – but these women fought with an inherent grace and technique it was unlike anything the girl had seen before in fighters. She heard the Mirialan yell something harsh as Ventress began to sick herself all over the navy-clad woman. The Togruta flew from them, landing on her butt before scrambling to her feet in a flurry and leapt into the air. She tilted her swords under her grasp and stabbed at the space the taller and older fighter occupied. Ventress careened back, doubling over her pivot and creating space. Enfys expected the orange girl to jump at her again, but it was the green-skinned warrior who took charge. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No! Barriss, wait!” The Togruta yelled across the room at her companion, but little Enfys saw Ventress smile at the display. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blue and red weapons clashed but the white woman was much quicker. When the one called Barriss swung her sword, Ventress purposefully dropped a blade so the blue fell sword and the Mirialan flew with her strength. She missed pathetically and her committed strike took her out. Ventress shoved her knee into Barriss’s gut before the Togruta leapt over her and slashed at Ventress’s head with an equally committed attack. The woman was still quicker and Barriss fell to her knees as her weapon slid across the floor. As the Togruta and Ventress tussled, Enfys saw and pressed her palms to the ray-shield barrier and watched as it fluttered and specked. Red and green laser hit the control console and smashed it in a flurry of sparks until the containment shield dissipated. There was a gasp from everyone behind Enfys and her own eyes darted to the weapon of the Mirialan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enfys!” She heard her Mama call to her as the crowd of prisoners made a break for it. Enfys didn’t move her little feet. She made a quick decision as she saw Ventress press her strength into the Togruta’s weapons. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Little Enfys stumbled onto the weapon, grasping it in both hands and focusing on her school studies of weaponry – there was a switch on the hilt that looked promising. She saw Barriss struggle in the corner of her eye as she cried out to her companion. “Ahsoka!” Enfys looked at the battling women as Ventress got the upper hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She reached for the dropped hilt from earlier and as if by pure magic, by bewitching impossibility the thing zipped to her hand without her touching it at all. The second red blade ignited as Enfys felt herself gasping as she stumbled into a charge as the hilt in her own hands ignited into bright glory. It was too late, however; Ventress got her blade and broke through Ahsoka’s defences, poking her, stabbing her in the shoulder as she dodged in a mistiming to get away. The visceral sound of sizzling flesh struck Enfys’s hearing and Ahsoka threw herself back. Still, the smaller girl was charging Ventress, the white woman laughing to herself as she defeated the Togruta. She spotted Enfys before she could slash at her midriff and knees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pathetic...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Ventress!” Ahsoka was yelling as Enfys stopped short of Ventress. She saw the Togruta pull at the air with a clenched fist and the whole bench from inside the holding cell flashed across the area to smack the woman in the chest, knocking her through a side door and out of harm’s way. Barriss struggled to get to her feet, but Ahsoka held her hand with both protest and affection. “Let her go... We freed the prisoners...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’ll get back to Dooku,” Barriss was telling her as Enfys closed down the weapon with another assumed flick of the red button switch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But we saved them, Barriss...” Enfys could see Ahsoka’s fingers closing around Barriss’s with more than friendship. “Anakin’s going to kill me when he sees this,” she told herself, licking the wound in her shoulder. Much of her bicep was stained with purple-blue blood now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Enfys didn’t hate the sight of blood but this was the first time she’d seen it and have it not be red or her own. “That looks bad...” She mused, walking closer to the two women as they got up. She handed Barriss back her weapon and gave a short and quick bow to her and Ahsoka both. “I’m sorry you got hurt...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ahsoka flashed a full and beautiful smile. Enfys hadn’t seen a smile like that before – the fullness of plump and wonderful lips and the adolescence of an older girl many more years her senior. Ahsoka looked really pretty, but with a strength and resolve in her flesh and bones that made the young colony girl a handful jealous of her and how she had just rescued all of them. The feat, even in a defeat served by the mysterious and powerful Ventress, had managed to inspire the nine-year-old more than anything else of her culture (of which there was a heritage she loved the style of – helmet similar to clones and armour of magical steel). She knew what the girls were too; Enfys had figured it out in holding Barriss’s blade. There had been one lesson on it, quick and brushed over but Enfys recognised all the iconography and the trappings of two Padawan learners.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re Jedi aren’t you..?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The very same, young one,” Ahsoka told her, still beaming. She reached down and offered Enfys her hand to hold and shake. “You were very brave, young one. What’s your name?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enfys... Enfys Nest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Enfys,” Barriss cut in, both her and Ahsoka looking at her as if they were mothers or big sisters. They were as beautiful as them too; Enfys found herself blushing in a sensation and a fondness for them she hadn’t felt for girls before. The room was pulsing so much and she felt so alive and weird that she couldn’t possibly focus on what it felt like – nothing she’d felt before even as the kid she was. “I’m Barriss Offee of the Jedi Order, and this is...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ahsoka smiled, Enfys really finding herself somehow mesmerised by her wider and fuller lips. She felt her own, feeling suddenly self-conscious but also very much alive. What in the world was this? There was no way to figure it out here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m Ahsoka Tano, thank you for being so brave Enfys... I sense one day you’ll be as fearsome a warrior as even Jedi are... With that much bravery, it’s as if you were from Mandalore...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enfys!” It was Mama, running down the corridor for her, with two more women following behind her. It was only now that Enfys realised the noise all over the base had quietened and all she could hear in terms of explosions or violence was far away and deeper into the canyons they were trapped in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As her mother crouched down, holding her, Enfys looked at the two more Jedi women coming into the holding room. She could tell they were the same as Ahsoka and Barriss, but not nearly as pretty as the Togruta. The latter of the newcomers, a smaller human girl was very much lovely in the face, but looked cold and still next to her mentor (who Enfys assumed was her mentor) who had a darker and much more aged face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well done Padawans... Tano! What happened?” The older Jedi asked, seeing Ahsoka clutching her burned and wounded shoulder. Her apprentice whipped out a spray bottle from her utility belt and peppered Ahsoka’s wound with a cleaning blue mist that stabilised the trickling blood. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Asajj Ventress, Master Junda,” Barriss reported; Enfys held steadfast to her mother as she held her and remained silent. “We had no intelligence to suggest the assassin would be here. The last time she was sighted by Clone Intelligence she was on Nar Shaddaa, working to undermine the influence of the Hutt Cartel...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Troubling indeed,” the Master Junda contemplated, her apprentice still looking cold and remaining quiet next to her. “I’ll pass this intel onto Master Luminara myself once we’re away – I’m bringing in my gunships now to escort the prisoners. You two are dismissed, Trilla will escort you back to the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Endurance </span>
  </em>
  <span>while I clean up this mess,” Junda told them stiffly – Enfys decided she did not like Master Junda much. “Trilla?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, Master. Come on Tano, Offee...”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They saw Enfys off with her mother aboard a gunship with another squad of clones wearing the yellower markings of the 7th Sky Corps. They were Master Obi-Wan’s troops, which meant reinforcements had arrived – Ahsoka looked at her commlink, expecting the urgent beeping of communication from Skyguy, but it was deathly silent. Had Cere already told him she was injured? Knowing him in his mood, he wasn’t going to be angry, only more than mildly concerned for her health and Ahsoka was too ashamed with her poor swordsmanship to have that on her conscience as well today. She snaked her arm around the high of Barriss’s back and let her tell from her senses that she was happy Ventress hadn’t managed to end her before she jumped. It was a reckless move, exceptionally so but Ahsoka had lapsed and her fear had for once truly snapped her mind into swift action. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you okay?” Ahsoka cooed, not giving a damn about her own health.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nevermind me, Ahsoka... What about you? Does it hurt?” Barriss threw right back at her. Of course, she did, Ahsoka knew she would be in the same state of mind as she was – the more they teetered to the edge of reason and rational thought, the more the morality of their secrecy fit. Ahsoka didn’t even notice her hand begin to slip down Barriss’s spine until she was feeling the small of her back. Faint anti-air fire in the background had gotten thinner. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fives and Echo were standing at attention next to the gunship, even behind his helmet Fives looked a little distraught to see Ahsoka with a small hole into her shoulder. She flashed him a reassuring smile and stood up straight as she got on, she didn’t let go on Barriss’s hand, but she felt so much tenser than she had on the flight into the atmosphere. Bakura had given her a rude awakening after her temple retreat. She was certainly back into the swing of things. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good to see you’re okay, skipper,” Fives nodded to Ahsoka. She was barely eighteen (her and Barriss both) but he still held her is as much high regard as he did Anakin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks, Fives. Sorry for charging ahead. We should have waited for backup... Anakin’s gonna kill me...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At least we got the hostages, Ahsoka. Not bad for a first milk-run on a canyon planet, hey?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, well, let’s see how Captain Rex feels about that, hey, Fives?” Echo had to gripe next to his brother. The more casual ARC give his brother a slight and playful punch to the shoulder as Ahsoka and Barriss embarked and the doors shut completely again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gunship lifted quickly, getting Ahsoka far away from Junda – with Trilla’s eyes on her from across the interior of the gunship hold, Ahsoka couldn’t dare to touch Barriss or look at her in any way. It was as if Suduri was inquisitive in her slightly dark-ringed eyes. There was a deep-seated something about the apprentice that Ahsoka could never at all like; she sensed intense darkness hanging from Trilla’s core by a thread. When she thought of Master Junda with ire, Ahsoka could swear Trilla flash a look of agreement. Her thoughts were betraying her, Barriss clutched her hand behind their backs away from Suduri’s glance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should get that looked at Ahsoka...” Trilla told her with a clipped and emotionless instruction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ahsoka felt Barriss’s warmth next to her, and her voice in her mind. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll look at it for you. They won’t need us for the rest of the day; I’ll make sure you’re ready for the rest of Bakura if you’ll let me...</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ahsoka heard, forcing the curl of a smile in the corners of her lips. She gave Barriss’s hand an affectionate and wanting squeeze. </span>
  <span>“Don’t worry, Trilla... I will,” Ahsoka beamed, feeling Anakin’s confidence. For all her master was, Ahsoka could never imagine him doing something like this, keeping this big a secret. He was too good a man.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Reprieve</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I should really stop uploading chapters at 5am my local...</p><p>Also enjoy sweet and spicy Barrisoka before we actually get into the fic next chapter. Oh boy here it comes!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Trilla strutted to the communications cluster in the rear of the command bridge. The </span>
  <em>
    <span>Endurance</span>
  </em>
  <span> had, for the most part, calmed since Ahsoka had embarked on the outbound flight to Bakura below, and now only hours later she was back, Admiral Yularen across the dish-shaped hologram projector not daring to crack a smile. Wullf Yularen rarely ever smile, increasingly less as the war went on – a twitch of pain burst through the layer of Bacta that Trilla had sprayed onto Ahsoka’s shoulder as she looked to the hologram projector stutter and let the millions of blue dots take the shapes of Masters Luminara, Allie, Junda and Anakin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Skyguy looked happy to see her at first, but when he noticed Ahsoka clutching her shoulder, not yet reaching the bandage wraps in her utility belt. Once again and behind their backs Ahsoka reached and snatched at Barriss’s fingers, holding them tight in her own and looking at her eyes. Silently she reminded her companion to steel herself and safely guard her emotions and feelings. Fives and echo flanked them and saluted the gathering of generals. Master Stass Allie was out of her starfighter now and it appeared that all the masters were gathered in what must have been the communicae of the forward operating base. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ahsoka,” Anakin called for her with a little steel in his voice, he didn’t sound anywhere near as moody or as perturbed as he had in the gunships. He could always tell her off, even lose his temper in the middle of a stressful situation but Ahsoka loved it when he calmed. He looked almost noble in the hologram blue. “It’s good to see you’re okay, Padawan,” he told her in a fatherly voice, much more fatherly than she’d heard in a while. She noticed Master Junda glare at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Our mission was successful, Masters... The prisoners were freed but we encountered Asajj Ventress,” Barriss offered instead, watching her own master stroking her chin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, I’ve already informed everyone, Padawan,” Junda shot her down, her tone olden and a little stiff, separated from the circle of cooperation created otherwise. Cere Junda (and by extension her inquisitive and almost skulking apprentice) was an outsider - Ahsoka sensed Barriss shoot Trilla daggers with darkly ringed sapphire eyes and she instinctively gave her fingers an affectionate squeeze. Both Padawans wanted to get away from the newly arrived partnership. “The droids are falling back but they’re very much strengthening their rear positions within the canyon maze – Trilla, I need you back on the surface in the next supply run; bring Tano with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anakin stopped Cere, Ahsoka feeling a jolt striking through her. “Now wait a moment, Master Junda. My apprentice is injured and requires rest before I bring her back to the surface,” he told her powerfully. In the corner of his eye, Ahsoka could tell he was shooting her a playful wink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“General Skywalker, I’ve read your and your Padawan’s track record and she could be a real benefit for us – I’d like to get this invasion finished swiftly,” Junda shot back. Ahsoka kept quiet; she knew why Cere was so gung-ho in this battle. She was a Seeker and wanted to be back at the time. As Tano held her lover and companion’s hand out of view, she didn’t want to go back with her now, she wanted to stay with Barriss, and with her master. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luminara backed Skyguy. “With all due respect, Master Junda, I believe it would be in our better interest to take our time rather than rush in and potentially take losses we cannot afford to take,” Unduli scorned her colleague. “I side with Skywalker; the Padawans can return in the morning while we clean up the areas beyond the landing zone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ahsoka, you and Barriss are dismissed,” Anakin told her, finally setting her heart at ease as she saw the warmth (even through the hologram transmission) in his loyal and beautiful eyes. They shot up to look behind the girls and to the ARC Troopers. “Echo, Fives, return to the landing zone with Trilla on the next supply run. Rex and Commander Gree have new orders for you, troopers.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Barriss eagerly and excitedly gripped all of Ahsoka’s hands, pulling at it as they filed out through the divide between Fives and Echo. The former nodded a goodbye to the Togruta as she left the room, she heard both of them utter a precise ‘yes, sir!’ to Anakin as the pair of girls left Trilla behind. Still, as Trilla got further and further away from her and Barriss, Ahsoka felt her eyes linger on them and the grip they had on each other’s hand. It was nowhere near enough to make her feel guilty of the need she had in her fingers as she held Barriss, however, nothing could do that. When the security door sealed shut and left them alone, the corridor empty leading into the rest of the maze of corridors of the Venator, except for a single mouse droid whirling as it sped away; Barriss turned her around and eyed Ahsoka readily. Her green hands and arms bound in tight blue apprentice Mirialan garb wrapped around Ahsoka’s shoulders and collar and before the Togruta knew it (still slightly creeped out by the prim and proper Trilla Suduri and her dark eyes and skin), Barriss was holding her close and tight in a supremely affectionate cuddle. She felt Barriss gasp against her shoulder, her arms tighten around her. Finally, they were alone without any eyes on them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The orange and white apprentice froze for the moment, overwhelmed by the warmth suddenly surrounding her as Barriss held her close. Time slowed down to a walker’s pace and just as Ahsoka had felt her master in the gunship formation, now she felt Barriss so candidly. She couldn’t not feel her around her – she sensed the light subtleties in her lover’s breath caught in her breast, her slight shivering and the adrenaline for finally getting to be alone and the candid warmth that she exhumed into her companion. Ahsoka’s eyes turned glassy, the flashes of the swift but hard fight against Ventress scaring her and dangling the thought of losing Barriss in front of her face. She knew what her fear led to, but this time she really could not let it slip under the rug of her rational stoicism. Barriss was so real, so graphic to her tough as she wrapped her arms around her lover’s lean and thin frame. She remembered cuddling her in the wreckage on Geonosis – both were at peace to die there, but now Ahsoka was demanding they live forever like this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They broke after seconds that felt like years and Ahsoka held her hand up, cupping Barriss’s cheek. She felt so soft, so warm, and so beautiful as she closed her eyes and silently cooed into Ahsoka’s touch. It didn’t feel wrong but felt forbidden. Barriss didn’t act like it was though; her delicate micro-movements felt like the most natural thing in the world. “Ahsoka...” Offee whispered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, Barriss...” Ahsoka whispered, reaching for the corridor camera with her hand and feeling the Force flow to her fingertips. She turned the camera away from spying on them and tried to disrupt its inner workings to force it to fail as she drifted closer to Barriss. “Stars,” Ahsoka felt herself saying before she helplessly kissed her companion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tasted divine, a light zing to her Mirialan lips with the undertone of a natural fragrance spiralling into Ahsoka’s senses. They had kissed before but not like this – this kiss could become a star, and Ahsoka’s heart was beating. The passion was wet, Barriss’s gentle touch gripping Ahsoka’s wrists on her cheek and her neck, letting the Togruta take control of her lips as they continued for a moment. Trilla’s aura dissipated from them, and the seconds stretched to more than they felt. All Ahsoka could feel was Barriss, and the secret love they kindled together into a light ember. But Ahsoka wanted more, unknowing if she could handle it or if she was even allowed. They weren’t that young, both in the twilight of their teens and approaching twenty rotations a piece. But neither knew what else to do. Ahsoka could sense the back of one of Barriss’s hands grace the tip of her hanging lekku and she shivered with sensitivity. They were certainly the most responsive parts of her alien body, and always Ahsoka felt more than a little conscious of them on her shoulders and upper bust. Barriss sensed her tense in the kiss and stopped, breaking off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The apprentice could see the glassy film of Ahsoka’s boreal-blue eyes and the shivers her brush of the lekku had dealt to the beautiful Togruta. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Barriss...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ahsoka...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Mirialan wanted to kiss her again, Ahsoka could read her emotions on her sleeves lie it was as exposed as her green and tattooed palms. She played about with her fingers, but a twang of pain rifled through her body from the lightsaber burn in her shoulder. “Ah!” She gasped, and Barriss fawned over her immediately.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me see to this, Ahsoka; it needs wrapping up...” She cooed and Ahsoka fell in love with the look she gave her naked shoulder, gently poking at the flesh around it and trying to spread the cauterised flesh burnt all around the burned crater of skin and ruptured muscle. Both apprentices could tell it was going to hurt a lot before it fully healed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay, Barriss...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No it’s not,” she demanded, gripping Ahsoka’s fingers again and holding her hand tight in both of her own. “Let me see to it, come on. Where are your quarters?”</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They were so close in the confines of the added bathroom – quarters for persons of interest aboard a </span>
  <em>
    <span>Venator</span>
  </em>
  <span>-class Heavy Cruiser were usually small based, and Ahsoka’s was smaller than her master’s aboard the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Endurance</span>
  </em>
  <span>. But at least she had a bathroom with a walk-in shower and ample sink space. The Togruta sat on a storage locker on its base in front of the mirror above the metallic sink, Barriss was hovering over and around her, working to slice the tarnished and burned slithers of flesh that was circling the latest of Ahsoka’s wounds. She looked at herself in the reflection; the Padawan looking back at her Mirialan companion’s diluted green fingers looked sadder than Ahsoka anticipated as she observed her face. Her chin was too square and her jowls looked a little too wide to Ahsoka. She picked her own visage apart increasingly as Barriss took her – the Jedi let all the medical appliances float around them with the force, placing the Bacta-coated slip of medical sponge to Ahsoka’s wound effortlessly and guiding the procedure more with her mind. Barriss seemed so talented and Ahsoka only began to see her flaws; primarily of those was her quick-temper and her lack of patience. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could see how much more impatient she was even compared to Anakin, who next to her seemed to be as slow and calculating as Master Obi-Wan. Ahsoka felt nothing like the Jedi she wished to be. Looking to Barriss concentrate around her shoulder, she wondered if it was all folly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your thoughts betray you, Ahsoka... What’s on your mind?” Her companion asked, wiping her gash with the sponge and running tap to soak her hands clean of the blemishes of blood spots. She’d stopped any bleeding that was there and all that was left now as to dress the thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m really glad we saved Enfys... But I can’t help feeling guilty,” Ahsoka confessed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not in a Jedi’s nature to feel regret, Ahsoka. You know what Master Yoda would say that leads to,” she doted, running an affectionate hand around her left montral and kissing the blue and white horns on her head. “You have nothing to feel guilty for ‘Soka...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her kiss, even on the harder chitin and flesh of her montral felt so beautiful and delicate on Ahsoka’s body she swooned internally. She was moonstruck, shrouded and bathed in Barriss’s compassion and counsel. They were such kindred spirits, brought together by conflict but so strong in their secrecy. Ahsoka felt her hands drift to her lover’s and she pulled her in, begging to be held by her as she continued to consult their reflections in the mirror. She didn’t want Barriss to dress her wound yet – they had hours until they had to be back on Bakura and Ahsoka only wanted to trick time into making them drag. Trilla was off the ship (much to Ahsoka’s relief) and they were alone now in her cabin, even given how small it was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hold me, Barriss...” Ahsoka pleaded with her, holding her arm and clawing her to remove her Padawan robes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Barriss pulled down her cloaked hood and dropped the whole shawl to the floor, her short hair was a sight Ahsoka loved to see curling the outline and back of her head, her pale-green flesh and dark fern-green facial tattoos looked so beautiful against the navy and black of her robes and hair respectively. The other Padawan held her gingerly at first and then gave her all into the cuddle puddle they created on the box over the sink. The war had eroded so much, this was them trying to find some semblance of good in it together, even if it was against the Order. Ahsoka didn’t feel loyal to the Order – she felt loyal to her family, to Anakin, Obi-Wan, Master Plo, Barriss, the 501st. Somehow the Clone Wars had drawn scattered battle lines within the Republic, within Ahsoka’s mind and she suddenly struggled with what it meant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not the Jedi I should be, Barriss...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her lover parted from her, holding her shoulders compassionately and crouching down to talk up to her. “That’s nonsense, Ahsoka,” she told her rather bluntly. “You’re an incredibly powerful and defiant woman... much more than I could ever hope to be; we all have our doubts, but you must remember that fear is a path to the Dark Side, Ahsoka. Don’t give in to your demons...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, I know,” Ahsoka batted, looking back in the mirror and almost not hearing the same Jedi teachings she had heard many times before. Anakin wouldn’t say this to cheer her up; her master would approach her humanly and organically, not with the dogmatic and narrow view repeated by the masters and council members of the Jedi. She felt like she was in the Archives again with Jocasta, with olden and wise masters incapable of reaching her as an equal person of the galaxy and not an apprentice. Reminders of the opposing forces of the light did nothing to inspire Ahsoka here, they merely made her revile her reflection all the more as she looking at herself. She traced the lighter outline of a scar on her collarbone, a slash from when she had had to fight her way through a hunting party of Trandoshian slavers and game hunters. She remembered that ordeal with such incredible and candid colour it still scared her as she traced that one of many scars. “Just once,” she told Barriss, reaching for her green hand and fingering the lines in her palm. “I want someone to look at me as Ahsoka... Not a Jedi Padawan... But Ahsoka Tano, a girl with scars that she doesn’t want anyone to see because she doesn’t want to see them herself,” she spoke truthfully, her eyes turning glassy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Barriss bolted up, cupping her companion’s cheeks and kissing her with strength and passion that Ahsoka had never sensed or felt from her before. They’d hidden their relationship, their growing love and affection like a smouldering ember, for so long but now Ahsoka sensed and felt a burning passion in the Padawan that had shocked her out of all protocol and reserved nature. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Barriss kissed her this time, she truly kissed her unlike Ahsoka had thought she could be kissed – it was graphic, longing, wanting, with gentle and warm darkness underlying how Barriss held her. It was consuming, absorbing and feeding such incredible euphoria into Ahsoka’s senses she struggled to hold out. Her hands got to Barriss’s wrists, trying to hold onto her, and then she wrapped them around her kisser’s shoulders, pulling her body closer as they both spiralled, giving into candid desire. It felt wrong, felt polar to their teachings, but Ahsoka couldn’t protest as Barriss continued to gift her fulfilling kiss. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want more, Ahsoka,” Barriss told her, suddenly with a fight in amethyst eyes glowing in the low light. Ahsoka was ragged next to her cheek, pecking her lips again, feeling a rising ecstasy in her blood that set it on fire. What was this sensation, this burning desire for her love? “And I know we probably shouldn’t... I can’t escape you, Ahsoka... Everywhere I go in this war...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re there, and so am I. Since Geonosis, we’ve been right behind each other whenever we sleep,” Ahsoka whispered, her hands daring to hold Barriss by her waist, her love handle. Her frame was tight and lean, thinner than Ahsoka’s own athletic body but she was ample and beautiful to hold as the Togruta sat. “What is this between us, Barriss... What are we doing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I... I don’t know...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They both froze, balancing on the edge of reason and no return and staring at the other’s opened mouth, lips agape with tongue’s dancing and wanting to taste more. Things had never been this heated between them; they’d kept it cool, kept it contained, and only now Ahsoka realised this was the first time they’d been alone with no eyes on them since she’d held Barriss’s almost totally frozen body in the bridge of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Consular</span>
  </em>
  <span>-class cruiser. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You see me, Barriss...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I do, Ahsoka,” Barriss affirmed, her hands drifting to hold her back, their foreheads touching and their lips lingering so close it was almost torture not to give in. Both felt a trapped heat stuck in her chest, rising and falling like the hot air of an afterburner in opened space. Their hearts yearned with the force of a proton torpedo.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re so beautiful when you put your hood down, Barriss,” Ahsoka struggled, trying to say anything to keep her romantic and sensual distance from her companion. Any longer without relief and she would surely fail to her lusts with Barriss this close to her. “Barriss I can’t stop...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want you to, ‘Soka.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love it when you call me that,” Ahsoka flirted, totally unashamed and more powerful than she had been seconds earlier. She was rising to her feet, her hands holding Barriss by her centre and pulling it closer to her own until their cores touched and they were standing. Ahsoka felt the Force flowing to her fingertips as the medical supplies all dropped the floor as Barriss’s concentration snapped. Her eyes were unblinking as she became enthralled by Ahsoka’s vision, the swirling darkness in her indulgent eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please,” Barriss whispered sensually, their noses drifting and tracing at the tips. What were they doing? Dancing around it like this was going to burn them both out and Ahsoka could feel the desperation on her companion’s end. “Ahsoka, I don’t want you to stop... Kiss me, ‘Soka.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ahsoka breathed, her exhalation like hot lava against her bosom as they walked back into the slightly bigger space of her cabin. She didn’t want to stop; turning them around so that Barriss stood before the bed, Ahsoka couldn’t escape her attractions as she focused on her pale-green face, the beauty of the bookish and stoic Padawan lingering in her jewelled eyes. She was so beautiful, her mouth at large and practically begging for Ahsoka to kiss her – the Togruta felt her forearms and finger shaking as she held her, desperate to somehow pull her even closer than she already was. Barriss asked her again ‘please’ and Ahsoka nearly fainted. It was about to be all or nothing – the Jedi or Barriss. But she couldn’t stop her feelings. She wished she could wish them away, but the kiss they’d shared outside of the bridge, and in the tank wreckage on Geonosis, and the kiss Ahsoka had planted on her lover’s forehead in the boreal copula of the command deck of the Consular before Master Fisto got to them. All of it compelled Ahsoka further into her sapphic choice, her machinations wholly consumed by Barriss’s deadly passion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Never had Ahsoka sensed her future so unclear. She held Barriss by her waist and kissed her deeply again, fuelling unrelenting passion further and letting the Mirialan hold her neck, her cheeks, her montrals and her lekku as she pushed her to the bed. With another wave of her hand and the Force stemming from her fingertips, Ahsoka locked the door and let the overwhelming warmth from Barriss take her dangerously. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They fell to the bed, parting and panting for air before Ahsoka kissed her love yet again, not wanting to fell the absence of her lips on her own. Ahsoka gave her Padawan beads a hardy tug until the strand came loose and she threw it to the ground in a defiant show of contempt. Barriss gasped, and there was a silent rift, all until Barriss heaved up and met Ahsoka’s lips once again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I see you, Ahsoka Tano... The most beautiful creature I have ever met in this galaxy... Scars and all...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m saying it Barriss,” Ahsoka told her, sharp determination in her eyes as her lover kissed the outline of her plump and full lips eager to be on her again. “I love you...” She confessed, and at that moment realised she would do absolutely anything for her companion, even if Barriss one day betrayed her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They closed down the lights and began to take off their clothes. They had hours to spare, and Ahsoka didn’t want Barriss not to be with her before they had to return to Bakura. This was all they had for now – enough.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Splintered</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Enfys!” Weazel called to her left. Benthic ‘Two Tubes’ careened the swoop cradle hard to the starboard side of the <em>Arquitens- </em> class light cruiser as the rest of the Cloud-Riders swarmed the vessel. The howl of starfighters screeched in the air, breaking from the rest of the Imperial supply convoy began to notice what was happening. The raid was turning more than sour but Enfys had no desire to break off, Saw wouldn’t and neither would she, even if she was more reserved than the increasingly mad partisan. She turned her head sharply to see the dwarf man bringing up the supply crates from a hole in the hull.</p><p>Benthic spluttered a curse and a question, snapping Enfys’s divided attention to him as he struggled to control the cradle. Enfys took the reins of her swoop, feeling the incredibly sloppy thrust and level. The whole foundations of her yacht-like canoe speeder rattled under her and made her worry. She watched and struggled to hold the vessel as Benthic leapt over the small holding net and took to the heavy blaster turret rigged to the nose sail. As he did, strapping himself in and trying to pinpoint the strafing fighters to suppress their concentration, Enfys reached for the ascension cables with a swift hand. This limited on the crew and without Weazel here to co-pilot for her, she struggled to hold the cradle of her swoop coherently.</p><p>The dwarf was flailing his arms at her from the flat hull of the Arquitens. A TIE Fighter strafed her swoop, forcing Enfys to curse under her breath, breathing heavily as she held the cradle controls in tight hands and demanded it turn faster than the Imperial craft. As she heaved the thing to starboard, Enfys tossed the cables as best she could to her crew – the rest of their swoop swarm (some six or seven more sizable speeder craft) were attached to the side of the hull, ready as the rest of her crew that wouldn’t handle the good returned to them.</p><p>“There are more fighters coming from the cruisers ahead,” Enfys reported into her Mandalorian helmet, rallying her crew to battle positions. They were mistaken for marauders, this was a time that Nest demanded they show them just how much worse they were. “Confuse their flight patterns and take them out...”</p><p>“We’re losing time, Enfys,” Weazel consoled her, pulling crate after crate from the hole in the hull with another two riders. They strapped them to the netting and cables as their leader kept the pace of the swoop parallel to the cruiser. They had never hit something this big.</p><p>Enfys looked to her crew working, the propulsion of the rest of the speeders and swoop bikes firing off and ascending to duel with the Imperial fighters above.</p><p>“We’re getting out of here with these supplies, Weazel – destroy the command deck and get up here,” she ordered her friend. Benthic let loose a rallying cry as he continued to pepper the sky with bolts from the heavy repeating blaster turret they had added to the large cradle. The Tognath hit a fighter in the solar panelled wing, clipping it in the centre axel and ripping a large and compromising tear in the craft. Enfys’s ripped attention split down the middle and her hands drifted on both the throttle and the steering.</p><p>The swoop cradle juddered and lurched. Benthic gripped the handles of the blaster unit hard as the front sail spun in a violent and unpredictable way – the hardy alien flew from his nest, over the railing and holding onto the gun at a lifeline save falling to the surface of Mimban below. Nest stood up, pulling down on the throttle lever as Weazel was yelling at her in her ear. She couldn’t assist – she was already leaping over the rest of the cradle, over the wireframe foundations and hull and supplies to get to Benthic before he fell. Weazel barked her name again from below as the rest of the Cloud-Riders zoomed and rose up into the full heat of the air battle to cover the operation. The Tognath dropped before Enfys could reach him, hopping over the railings of her ship with the billowing robes of her battle armour flapped in the harsh wind; it was picking up and they were running out of time.</p><p>She slid into the gun nest just as her companion dropped his grip again, and Enfys caught him with the fires of desperation fuelling her fingers to grip his hand. “Benthic!” Enfys called to him, trying to pull him up. The cradle couldn’t hold for long without her at the reins of its control. “Weazel! Get up here and take control, I need you!” She screamed into her helmet commlink.</p><p>“We’re losing control, Enfys!” He bellowed to her from his position, the freight rising to the cradle. He strapped to a cable and blasted off to the controls with a just burst of thrust from his tiny jetpack. He was the smallest and lightest of the crew, it took hardly any propulsion to beam him from the other two riders to the handlebars of the cradle. As soon as he had taken the position, he looked up to see what Enfys was dreading next still pulling up Benthic. “More TIEs! Incoming!”</p><p>Benthic was cursing more in his native tongue, flailing his free arm until he strained all strength he had left. “Come on, you Tognath slime!” Enfys cursed his bones and rebreather until he gripped her wrist with a tight grasp. A hellfire of green heavy lasers peppered their positions, ripping through the smaller section of the bow sail and casting sparks all over Enfys as she pulled up her rider. “Is the cargo on board, Weazel?!” She harkened back to the controls. Just as she pulled Benthic up enough to clutch the robes of his back to get him aboard, the last crate made a significant thud in the cargo nest and Chussido fell onto the small deck.</p><p>“We’re aboard, Enfys!” Weazel called.</p><p>“Detach the cables! Contact Moda and Tayshin on the <em>Aerie</em>... We break sub-orbital!” Enfys commanded, finally heaving her last and dropping Benthic onto the thin bulkhead flooring of his gun nest. The leader flipped her comm channel to the whole clan and yelled. “Riders make for the <em>Aerie</em> now and take as many of them with you!”</p><p>Chussido stood and crouched in the comfort of the cargo clutch and pulled out a blaster rifle. “Jet Troopers! Mandalorians!” The Rhodian yelled in Huttese and began to shoot before Enfys could compute. One landed right behind her, kicking her.</p><p>The sharp contact into her spine knocked the wind right out of her, but she kicked her senses into overdrive, pulling out her knife to act as her only guard. The Imperial Mandalorian trooper tossed his rifle on his back, obscuring Chussido’s aim on him with Enfys’s massive silhouette. She was much smaller inside of her armour, and much fairer, but her exterior exhumed such masculine and secret energy, she was a perfect but tribal visage of her Mandalorian heritage – this assailant was an off-brand bastardisation of what her people would regard as worthy of the name. The Imperial version of the traditional helm made her want to spit on him as he cracked his neck for tension and held up his fists.</p><p>“Attack, man-scum!” He roared at her behind pale snow-white and pathetic armour. Everyone mistook her for a male with her stature, boyish frame in her armour and modulated voice - some part of it got Enfys off, making her feel protected and keeping her more vulnerable identity as a girl safe</p><p>Enfys held her ground, dropping her knife to flip it in her fist as he lost his patience and rushed her all at once without much temperance. His technique and stance was shockingly sloppy and easily defendable. Enfys held steady, grappling with him for a moment and sticking the vibroknife into the softer flesh under his shoulder and causing him to bellow a guttural howl. She wrestled with his neck, lifting him up and tossing him over the side of the cradle.</p><p>“Weapon!” She roared to the Rhodian in the cargo cluster. To her hands came flying her electroripper staff, clashing with her beskar gauntlets with a twang as more of the jet troopers came scurrying around the cradle swoop. Quickly she called over her own personal bike, rallying Chussido to defend Benthic on the gun turret. “I’ll distract them! Get the cargo to the <em>Aerie</em>!” She called to Weazel, earning a stark upward clock of his helmeted visage. He was against her strategy, watching as the rest of the riders swarmed the TIE fighters above the convoy across Jedha. Chussido crouched next to Benthic as the Tognath suppressed the skies with a continuous blast from his turret. Nest’s swoop came alongside the cradle, Callixido Ryss holding the handles and hopping to the rear seat of the two-seater swoop.</p><p>Weazel stood up on the chair of the cradle to measure up protesting. “Enfys, wait!” The dwarf called to her but Nest was already hopping onto her Skyblade-330 all-too-quickly. The shorter man could not help but notice how impatient she was acting now – never had she been this reckless, not even against the full naval might of the Empire.</p><p>“Get the cargo to the <em>Aerie!</em>” She called to Chussido before pushing the throttle of her Skyblade to the maximum and hurling herself against the Mandalorians.</p><p>“Imps, on our six!” Callixido called into her ear over the rippling propulsion of the swoop’s thrusters under their feet.</p><p>“Get a clear shot...” Enfys told him.</p><p>Hurls of blaster shots from the flying Stormtroopers came to pepper her swoop, barrage after barrage as she focused on the nearby <em>Gozanti</em>-class launching the wing of TIEs. She spotted the one with the clipped wing focus on her tail, no doubt spotting the persona of her mother’s helm and identifying her – she’s seen herself on wanted posters all over the system, the familiar slit of her warped and scavenged Mandalorian helm gazing back at her through bounty pucks. No doubt more than a dozen small-time hunters would have the unfortunate idea to go after head in particular, but as long as they didn’t eye her riders. The proximity alert on her commlink unit in the beskar of her gauntlet began to ring – the <em>Aerie </em>was descending to just above the cloud layer and Enfys could see her brothers and sisters begin to break for the safety of the moving and mobile home they’d made for themselves. The <em>Aerie </em>could store and launch their swarm of swoop bikes in rapid timing, a moving fortress and garage that moved operations all over the galaxy.</p><p>“Enfys! We should break...” Callixido landed on her back, his head lolling onto her shoulder.</p><p>It took a delayed half-second for Enfys to recall mishearing the contact of a blaster bolt hitting her gunner in the chest before he gave out to his dead body’s weight. Enfys gasped and jolted as he fell from her swerving swoop. And suddenly he was gone – Enfys couldn’t move.</p><p>The sound of laser searing into armour and flesh reminded her of a conflict she’d witnessed as a nine-year-old on an Outer Rim world called Bakura. She was much smaller than she even was now, and remembered witnessing the ordeal with her own eyes as her mother ran out of the holding cell crying out for her. Enfys remembered the combatants there – a mysterious woman she knew to be called Ventress, a Dathomirian Zabrak of the Nightsister Clans she later found out through her own research before returning to Concord. Her attackers were two Jedi Padawans then (a whole title that was now redundant and felt ancient even on Jedha below her), a Mirialan woman named Barriss Offee and a beautiful Togruta girl that had bewitched even the younger Enfys’s attractions and inspired a feeling within her that had been fully explored in her later years; she’d made Enfys realise her preferences for women before men. Her name had been Ahsoka Tano.</p><p>Ventress had gotten the better of Ahsoka in that duel, Enfys had watched the whole thing enthralled from the door of the ray-shielded holding cell as the rest of her people made for the exit under the protection of clone troopers. Asajj had dispatched Barriss with a kick to the gut and her lightsaber had been thrown to the floor. When Ahsoka threw herself at Ventress, the Nightsister repelled her, dropping one of two red blades to the floor and then calling it back to her had with the Force. Ahsoka, ill-tempered like rogue slag, had not seen through Asajj’s combative treachery and had suffered as the witch thrust her lightsaber to the Togruta’s frame. Enfys remembered the searing scorch as the tip of the lightsaber caught her saviour in the orange exposed flesh of her shoulder before the smaller Nest had raced to intervene even as a child. The whole thing felt like so long ago now, and Callixido catching the bright yellow bolt of Mandalorian weaponry cast her back.</p><p>It was the sound of Incomm thrusters and afterburners that snapped her back to reality as her swoop cut through the sky. X-Wings coloured in white and black, dirty from the sands of Jedha came overhead, blasters lighting up the remaining TIE Fighters as the Mandalorian weaponry had ceased its onslaught on her Skyblade-330. Enfys shook herself awake from her daydream of Ahsoka’s beautiful form all that time ago.</p><p>“Enfys!” Weazel was calling over the commlink into her helmet, so loud her ears almost bled. The racing thrusters of X-Wings and a U-Wing almost threatened to scorch the sky above her.</p><p>“It’s Saw...” Enfys told herself, pushing her hands down on the handles of her swoop. The TIEs were circling her, trying to muddle the targeting of the X-Wings, but as they did, Enfys had a shocking thought, one that chilled her to the bone while the X-Wing flight got closer. The <em>Aerie</em>’s shadow loomed over her through the cloud layer as it zoomed onward. She looked up at it and grimaced under her helmet, feeling like a fish in a barrel as the only swoop she could see.</p><p>The fighter with the clipped wing hissing with steam damage fluttered too close to her Skyblade as she considered her options, forcing her to pile on the thrust to her swoop. A moment later she could hear the repeating quad-batteries of a Partisan X-Wing hot on its pursuit. Blow, the Arquitens had bugged out, along with the rest of the convoy either breaking for orbit too or trying to retreat back to the comfort of the Star Destroyer parked above the Holy City. More of Saw’s doing was coming back to haunt Enfys as she thought of him – once she’d worked with him to procure Coaxium from a young smuggler and his Wookie counterpart. Now he would be her undoing.</p><p>Careening over the side of her swoop, she dreaded to think how far up she was flying. Enfys, for the first time flying, felt vomit quelling in the pit of her stomach, and a swath of sweat take hold of her fair and youthful brow. Her hearing focused wholly on the screeching hiss of the damaged fighter to the side of her, knowing it was about to cut out followed by the force of detonation.</p><p>“Curse you, Saw...” She swore to herself and noticed the flutter of X-Wing laser fire.</p><p>Desperate and defiant, Enfys let go of the handles and hurled herself from the controls of the Skyblade-330 and dove for the opened air. The whole TIE Fighter exploded next to her swoop, taking it with it as Enfys fell through the wind. She looked up through the slit of her poetic helmet and focused on the words she’d inscribed on it when she had inherited it. <em>Until we reach the last edge, the last opening, the last star, and can go no higher...</em> That seemed a lot closer to her now – she waited a few seconds, and let the rush of promised death take her, and gently she passed out in her armour waiting for her end.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Death was like the land of a dream – Enfys awoke in the echoes of a memory of her nine-year-old life in a makeshift cot aboard a star cruiser. Next to her was a viewport, looking out to see the craggy world of a moonlit Bakura she remembered from long ago. There were the speckles of explosions in orbit along with those on the surface and Enfys felt compelled to get out of her childhood rack. She was not used to the gentle hum of the cruiser’s engines ticking over underneath her, and all around she could see Clones clad in armour of white and etched in blue and green depending on what unit they belonged to. Her mother was sitting down on the bulkhead floor – she’d fallen asleep a while ago and was watching over where Enfys had, but now the child was awake and wanted to explore.</p><p>She guessed that this must have been the ship Ahsoka and Barriss came from, and couldn’t help but want to seek them out. Intrepid and eager, Enfys scooped up her shoes and slipped them on over her small feet and up to her equally small knees. She was a short child and would remain shorter into her teens and twenties, all the way until her death.</p><p>As small as she was made it easy to slip among the legs and knees of the Clones, moving from the refugee centre into the corridors, moving around like a mouse droid and even finding one. Even as a child, Enfys had a knack for hiding and moving in stealth around confined and military spaces. She skulked and hid from the Clones as she moved around the maze of corridors. One time she hid around the side of a maroon and green astromech, sensing as if she remembered the colours – its blue eye cemented it. This was the same colour palette as Ahsoka Tano. But where was she?</p><p>“Droid... Where’s your master?” She asked the R-unit astromech.</p><p>The droid replied, abashed and aghast, identifying itself as Arseven with a much-heated retort. It was being far too loud. “Okay, okay! Arseven... Do you know where Ahsoka is? I just want to see her... I want to thank her. Where is she?”</p><p>Arseven squabbled some more, replying like a spluttering avian creature as it wheeled away some, trying to ignore the girl. But Enfys stood between it and the rest of the droid entourage heading to the maintenance bay for operational assessment. Enfys spotted its glance and purposefully barred Arseven entry away from her – the girl wanted answers, wanted Ahsoka. She couldn’t forget the Togruta since the surface. It had been three days or so, and Enfys wanted to see the beautiful Jedi again with the full lips and athletic body. She was all Enfys could think of, exploring the mental image she had of the Padawan – thinking of her saviour had made her blush when talking with her mother, and the redhead tanned girl needed to meet her again, if anything to say her thanks, and goodbye. The invasion had worked and Bakura had been quiet from what her mother had told her.</p><p>Any day, the Republic was be escorting the prisoners of the facility back to Concord, and Enfys would never see Ahsoka again.   </p><p>“The bridge?” Enfys repeated after Arseven complied with her mild extortion. “Where is that and how can I get there from here, droid?” She demanded of the astromech moreover. But Arseven was silent suddenly, putting its third wheel away and standing on its two appendage wheels. “Arseven?!”</p><p>“What’s going on here?” The carbon-copied voice of a Clone spoke behind Enfys.</p><p>When she looked around herself to see his towering stature, the small Concordian noticed how different he looked from the regular line and rank troopers she had evaded to get this far and this deep into the maze of the Venator she called her temporary home. The trooper was built a lot more, and his armour was significantly different but familiar – he had padded armour around his neck and over his shoulders along with a backpack on his armour. His trooper armour was decorated with a lot of blue of the 501<sup>st</sup> (listening in around the corridors, Enfys had discovered all the blue troopers were from that unit and the green denoted the 41<sup>st</sup> Elite Corps but there were far less of them on the <em>Endurance</em>). On his helmet, Enfys could see the number five, and she suddenly recognised him from the prison block.</p><p>“Wait a minute! You’re Fives, aren’t you?” She asked him, emboldened by how far she had gotten without being detected. Her physical instructor back on Concord would have been proud of her developed abilities, even more because she had evaded Clones. “You were with Ahsoka at the prison!”</p><p>“You’re one of the prisoners... You’re that little girl who helped Ahsoka against Ventress, aren’t you?” Fives asked her, suddenly dropping protocol as he leaned on one knee to reach a similar height to Enfys. “What was your name... Enfys right? You’re not meant to be here, you know. Refugees are meant to stay in their area...”</p><p>Enfys stood her ground, not wanting to give up and return to her mother before seeing and talking to Ahsoka. “I just want to see Ahsoka... Can you just take me to see her? We’re leaving tomorrow and I just wanted to thank her, Fives,” she begged of the soft ARC Trooper. She could tell he was like she was, or more like her mother was; he had a human quality to him that made her want to touch his hand and sense him. She reached out and held his finger, it was much larger than even her father’s had been but Fives was accommodating her as they shared an odd moment. Even through his helmet, Enfys could tell he was a child at heart, a caring man with such a paternal quality to him that she loved to see, and tried to reach out to.</p><p>It was done without argument. Arseven went back to the cluster of droids and Fives escorted her to the turbo-lift, taking a shortcut from the barracks (Enfys hadn’t even realised she had snuck to the barracks area, having of course gotten lost without realising) to the bridge in one short trip. Many more Clones, both troopers and officers were leaving, as well as the robes dark-skinned Jedi Master that Enfys remembered from the prison. She was Master Cere Junda, and her slightly pale apprentice behind her was Trilla if Enfys remembered properly. She tried to wrestle her photographic memory to come into gear as she looked behind her and fives – Trilla was looking at her with a dark glance and it did something to perturb and unsettle Enfys for a moment until the doors to the bridge slid open and she spotted the bridge orange skin of her savour again. She smiled immediately as she saw Ahsoka, standing next to a much taller man than her in black and brown robes with a bob of luscious brown hair that the nine-year-old was envious of. Whoever this Jedi was, she wanted hair like him, as well as a black glove with metal straps that covered his right hand. It made him look hardy; Enfys wanted it.</p><p>“I think we can move our operations to occupy Bakura for a few months, Master Skywalker,” another alien was speaking from the holographic table overlay. He was a slightly elfish and piggish master clad in armour with a curious apprentice next to him.</p><p>Fives stopped with Enfys, holding her shoulder and putting his foot before her. “Wait here for them to finish, okay?” He asked her seriously and she sensed protocol and doctrine return to her kindred Clone. She nodded, not wanting to say anything to interrupt. Ahsoka and her master hadn’t noticed them yet and suddenly Enfys was excited.</p><p>“Thank you, Master Torpal,” the taller Jedi next to Ahsoka spoke. “I’m sending Master Junda and her apprentice back to the Temple. We’ll depart tomorrow with Master Allie while Luminara and her Padawan wait for your relief.”</p><p>The alien master smiled and nodded. “Sounds good to me, Skywalker. We’ll hold that world until the invasion of Bracca is ready to depart. I’m sure the 13<sup>th</sup> Battalion could use the practice in occupation as opposed to security detail on some senatorial world. Good luck on Mimban...” Master Torpal exchanged before him and his apprentice’s holograms faded into nothingness. The lack of blue revealed a man with a mighty moustache behind the table, he noticed and locked eyes with Enfys but she sensed fatherly warmth behind doctrine.</p><p>“Why are we suddenly using the word ‘occupy’?” Ahsoka asked the taller Jedi, the beautiful melody of her voice now fresh in Enfys’s ears. It made her giddy enough to smile. Why did she love the sound of her voice so much?</p><p>“Isn’t that what we’re doing, Padawan?” Her master asked her.</p><p>“I thought the goal was to liberate Bakura from the Separatists... Not enforce Republic occupation...”</p><p>The officer behind the table let out a stiff cough and gestured the Jedi’s attention to Fives and Enfys behind them no doubt. The giddiness within her rose and rose as Ahsoka turned and noticed her. Fives was speaking but she didn’t listen, she focused only on the big blue eyes of the woman who saved her from prison and before he was done explaining, Enfys couldn’t keep her feet still. She ran to Ahsoka, calling her name and hugging her centre.</p><p>“Sorry, General... She said she just wanted to see Ahsoka...” Fives finished explaining and Ahsoka knelt before her, smiling too.</p><p>Enfys studied her master, seeing the one called Skywalker smile and wink at her. “Oh, I think my apprentice can handle one adoring fan, right Snips? Good job, Fives. Now, who might you be, youngling?” Skywalker asked her, but Enfys still had all her attention on Ahsoka as she held her wrists like a maiden. It was so affirming to see that the Togruta Padawan was happy to see her too – all of Enfys’s daydreams came true all at once and this was certainly worth abandoning her mother and sneaking past Clones to see her, and even meet her master.</p><p>“Master, this is Enfys Nest,” Ahsoka told her. Skywalker knelt down too to join the conversation too.</p><p>“I just came to say thank you to Ahsoka, and goodbye, since we’re going to be heading back to Concord tomorrow,” she confessed, secretly loving the feeling of the older girl’s hands on her forearms. Ahsoka was so beautiful – the size of her montrals and lekku resting down the exposed flesh of her collar and shoulders, the fullness of her pretty lips and the lean strength that Enfys could now even <em>feel</em> in her forearms and body.</p><p>It was not that Enfys wanted to be like Ahsoka. That had been how Enfys had seen other girls and boys, this was a deep-seated awakening she hadn’t felt before. Combining the exposure of the girl in the prison and now on the bridge, Enfys realised she just wanted Ahsoka plainly, she wanted to give her a lot more hugs. And this spurred another realisation in the head of the plucky and talented nine-year-old surrounded by Jedi. She didn’t find Ahsoka’s master appealing on the eye. She didn’t find boys or men appealing, but Ahsoka, even Barriss, even Ventress... Enfys saw their commonalities – they were all girls, and Enfys identified them as people she liked. Enfys liked girls a lot.</p><p>“You said you found her in the barracks, Fives?” Skywalker asked.</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>“How did you get to the barracks, Enfys?” Ahsoka asked her, suddenly pleased by the feat. Her lips smiling looked like the prettiest thing the small-time Mandalorian from Concord had seen up until that point, even more breathtaking than her display with lightsabers against Ventress.</p><p>Enfys smiled proudly. “I snuck around all of the Clones until I found your astromech... I could tell he was yours by the colours, he told me you were here but ratted me out to Fives...”</p><p>Ahsoka wrapped her arms around Enfys again as she heard Skywalker laugh a boisterous chuckle and stood. The hug from his apprentice made Enfys warm, but she was shocked even for a child when Ahsoka pressed her lips to her soft cheek and kissed her sweetly. It ruptured Enfys’s heart and enthralled her to Ahsoka’s masterful form – the suddenness of it stunned the nine-year-old and the sisterly kiss felt so warm. “I foresee you’re going to become a big strong girl when you grow up Enfys. Jedi are never wrong so make sure you come to visit me in the Temple on Coruscant when the war’s over, okay?”</p><p>“Okay!” Enfys beamed.</p><p>Skywalker was still laughing, his chuckles charming. “She’ll hold you to that Enfys... Make sure you visit her. The war won’t last much longer, I promise...”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Death didn’t take her in the end.</p><p>Enfys found herself waking with her hands bound to a stone wall behind her and with the haphazard bars of a prison cell directly in front of her. They’d left her with her helmet on – they knew who she was and it had given them away as the Partisans. Only Saw’s lot would know and respect her enough to leave her helmet on as a prisoner; her suspicions came into reality when she noticed the raggedy clothing of another Tognath beyond the cell door. She knew him, it was Benthic’s twin or eggmate brother – Edrio ‘Two Tubes’.</p><p>“Release me, Edrio! I might let Saw live for this if you do...” She threatened, tugging on the rusted binders holding her wrists together. They wouldn’t hold her, not with her Mandalorian strength. She’d break them within moments and splice through the door – he’d have to shoot her through the bars and risk angering Saw, not to mention bring down Weazel, Benthic and the rest of the Cloud-Riders down on the Partisans.</p><p>The Rebel Alliance would be laughing at them from Yavin at this point. Enfys ignored Edrio as he spoke to her in the native tongue Benthic used. She was willing to just rest until the lights turned off.</p><p>“Edrio?” She asked, seeing nothing through the helmet while her night-vision visor adjusted slowly.</p><p>The Tognath spoke nothing – the outline of a tall and horned figure sauntered to him from what Enfys could hardly see. She could tell the figure to be feminine, the horns reminding her of Ahsoka as she approached Edrio at the cell door. Flashbacks of Ahsoka rescuing her on Bakura as a child confused her vision as she saw only the decals of a Separatist holding cell and Jedha completely blurred from the present.</p><p>“You will release this woman from the cell, and then leave this room with your weapon on the floor. You will not remember anything of this encounter when Saw Gerrera asks you who came for her...” The woman spoke in a gorgeous and melodic tone; it was enough to lull Enfys completely to sleep as she struggled to see in the night-vision that still didn’t work. It gave out entirely as the woman repeated. “You will not remember this when Saw Gerrera asks you about it... And you will leave this cell with your weapon on the floor...”</p><p>As if bewitched, Enfys recognised Edrio repeating exactly what the woman had told him in the first person, telling her he was unlocking the door and letting Enfys out of the cell. As the Tognath opened the jail cell and came to undo her binders, Enfys took her chance and snapped her way out of the restraints. Edrio was stunned, taken aback but snapped out of his spell from the woman enough to yell for backup as loud as he could. The Mandalorian heard the woman gasp and flood into the cell as she knocked her helmed head hard into Edrio’s forehead, taking him down with a clack of her etched battle helm against the rocky hide of a the Tognath.</p><p>“She’s in here!” Came the cries of Partisans flooding the cell block.</p><p>“Are you crazy?” The sudden visage of a Togruta asked as she pulled out the hilts of two lightsabers, igniting blades of white that Enfys never knew possible. She began to deflect blaster bolts as she flew into the cell. “Take his blaster! We have to get out of here!”</p><p>“Ahsoka Tano...” Enfys recognised, her cheeks blushing under the helmet as she slowly reached for Edrio’s gun. It was her, truly her – Nest’s prayers had been answered and once again as if from her wildest dreams of long-matured pinking, Ahsoka Tano had come to rescue her...</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Jedha</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Enfys became mesmerised within a moment – Ahsoka had darted out in front and began to deflect a seemingly infinite amount of blaster bolts from the onslaught of Saw’s Partisans. Nest herself became stunned, the odd bolt burying itself in the stone doorway of the Jedha cell – in no way was the Cloud-Rider proficient or even trained in ranged combat, and could see her electroripper staff ad beskar gauntlets on the table in front of her beautiful Togruta saviour.</p><p>“Do you do this often?” Enfys barked over the sound of incredible blaster fire.</p><p>“Getting shot at, you mean?” Ahsoka retorted, seeing the weaponry belonging to the captive, no doubt, sitting on the table between them and the Partisans. “Yes!” She barked, one bolt narrowly skimming her montrals.</p><p>What was Saw thinking, keeping her captive?</p><p>They had once been firm and steeled allies, she had maximised his fighter and naval capabilities with a shipment of Coaxium from Savareen, and now here he was capturing her and holding her for ransom. Enfys laughed before Ahsoka Tano could answer her, shooting a volley of blaster bolts from Edrio’s rifle at the rest of coterie before tossing it over the precipice of the doorway. She continued to laugh a little – the arrival of her saviour had forced her mind into a slight tinge of mania, and suddenly all she could focus on was the former-Jedi with her obvious white lightsabers.</p><p>“What are you even doing here?” Enfys heard her male-modulated voice utter over the volley from the Partisans.</p><p>“What does it look like?” Ahsoka asked, tossing one of her dual-wielded weapons at the firing squad. “Rescuing you of course...” The Togruta barked, deflecting another bolt to a Partisans’ hand.</p><p>The evidently former Jedi was not taking any of them down; Enfys could see the way they took either non-lethal shots from their own blasters or dropped their guns entirely that Ahsoka had no objective in killing renegade Rebels at all. “Turn your weapon to stun!” Ahsoka called after Enfys hurled a mighty bolt into the wall.</p><p>“I need my staff and my gauntlets if we’re going to get out of here!” Nest yelled at her saviour. While Ahsoka could not see the length of her smile, or even that Enfys was a woman and a young one in actual fact, Enfys still displayed a huge grin, ecstatic she fight with her fantasy woman now.</p><p>It was hard to concentrate after this – Enfys still leered under her helmet, realising she was having the most fun in her life since seeing Ahsoka and her master Skywalker on the bridge of the Venator so many years ago, now it felt like a lifetime had passed. Ahsoka’s frame lit up to her in the imposed darkness of the makeshift and pathetic cellblock until all Enfys could focus on was orange flesh, and blue-white scale and chitin of proud and much more prominent montrals and lekku (which now snaked down to far below Ahsoka’s apparently ample bosom, which itself had grown a lot since Enfys had last seen her). Her entire persona, her bodice, her movements, all of which enticed and inspired the outlaw to the point where Enfys couldn’t sit still. As Ahsoka moved, all Enfys could focus on was her body – her arms cut through the air and flowed with the drafted gust like a true monk, honed and precise to a point that totally enthralled the outlaw. Then came her face and her head; as the woman dove from her stance in the doorway, taking point, her expert legs and feet connected with two Partisans, tanking them to the floor while still very much alert of all the blaster bolts coming at her. Enfys jolted when she saw sapphire-blue eyes connect with her own through her Mandalorian visor. She tucked her head down and folded her limbs together, rolling to stand back-to-back with Ahsoka.</p><p>Was it strange or erotic to think this was as close to the zenith of a woman Enfys had been in her life, and knowing that the Togruta unit probably didn’t know who she was at all, couldn’t remember her? Enfys bit her lip under her visage and gripped a Partisan by his robes.</p><p>“Turn!” Ahsoka ordered her; already Enfys could get to grips with such authority.</p><p>“On two!” Enfys called back in an instant, punching her hostage in the face to ensure he was out – as she did, she noticed Edrio standing up and reaching for his own rifle she’d left at the door. “Edrio!” She called to Ahsoka as she felt the Togruta count to the second and push against the thick robes of Nest.</p><p>“Two!” Ahsoka called, pushing her back against Enfys, facing Edrio in an instant.</p><p>Enfys tossed the unknown Partisan into the crowd, forcing his unconscious body to catch blaster bolts as he created a distraction for her to dart forward and vault over the table. In the corner of her hearing, Enfys heard the familiar cry of Edrio again, feeling guilty as his body hit the ground for having is brother as an essential part of her operation. She blamed Saw; the whole time she gripped her electroripper staff and gauntlets and began to dispatch the rest of the assault squad, Enfys blamed Saw Gerrera. He had grown spineless of late. The past two years, ever since his campaign on Kashyyyk, the man had lost some semblance of himself along with his limbs. Enfys battered her way through the hit squad thinking about him, proving them no match for her twenty-six-year-old body as she dropped them to the floor.</p><p>“Don’t kill them!” Ahsoka cried behind her, forcing her to turn and stop beating them.</p><p>“I’m...” She paused, powering down the staff and looking at the ruthless glaive of its head. She tossed it on her back and compacted it into the size of a large baton before sinking her gauntlets over her naked arms. She felt wrong without them and while she was only a bastard Mandalorian (or felt as such, always being seen as one) it still felt like a traditional comfort to feel the beskar on her skin and furs again as she gripped her fingers into fists. “I didn’t,” she told Ahsoka, tripping over her own tongue.</p><p>Now wasn’t the time or the place, and Enfys knew as much from the way Ahsoka powered down her glorious white lightsabers and trudged towards the staircase leading to the exit. But something within the marauder wanted to stop, to cross the gap over writing bodies in the middle of what looked like a safe house and to approached the much older version of her childhood wonder to embrace her. So much of Enfys wanted to exclaimed proudly to Ahsoka, to tell her who she was, what she had done, but when the half-Mandalorian looked at the stoic Jedi, she didn’t see an expression she knew. Ahsoka looked so much older, so much more beautifully withered like a wilted rose still in its singular vase, and in her beautiful sapphire eyes Enfys saw the embers that had long since dwindled and the remnants of which dragging the woman down to her knees. She reached out with a free hand, trying to reach out to the Togruta as she moved Edrio deeper into the cell and closed it with the Force flowing to her fingertips. Purely based on the physical and spiritual display Enfys had observed during the fight the now fully-formed knightess had developed like a blossoming flower and tempered steel blade, but within her pores and scaly skin, the Cloud-Rider saw within her muse and fantasy woman deep-seated baggage that threatened to weigh her down tremendously.</p><p>Enfys could not allow it – the display of a stoic but downtrodden Ahsoka Tano threatened to seep into her memories, poisoning them with this eventuality. The rebel could not allow it. She tossed her electroripper staff to her offhand and reached out with her main. With all the might in her masculine but so fair body, Enfys called to her muse, to the focal point of her dreams for almost two decades.</p><p>She wanted to speak, to say something chivalrous and worthy of the attention both her sleeping and waking mind had devoted to the mental image of the Togruta Jedi for so long, but Enfys failed herself. Her tongue bowed out, and her brain flat-lined in the presence of such a woman. Enfys bowed her covered head and ripped the cowl from one of the Nikto Partisans. She didn’t know Saw had engaged with the Hutts, and yet now her suspicions about the Cyborg-man seemed to turn fowl.</p><p>“There will be more coming,” Enfys spoke aloud, tossing one of the cloaks to Ahsoka. Even Togrutas were a rare sight on such an oppressed planet such as Jedha; combined with Enfys, Ahsoka was bound to stick out like a sore thumb.</p><p>“You’re right,” Ahsoka mused, pulling the shawl around her broad but still smooth shoulders. They were exactly the way Enfys Nest remembered them being – so sharp but with ineffable sucre of femininity to their curvature that carried almost all of the woman’s upper body with her athletic build. In the years Enfys had not seen her, Ahsoka had filled the rest of her frame with a gentle fullness that exhumed almost only maternal energy the rebel wanted to be purely in the thick of. Seeing the naked forearms of her twice saving grace, even Enfys Nest bit her lip again with a gesture of sapphic prayer. She steeled herself for strength until Ahsoka had wrapped up her lightsabers in a wrap of tattered cloth and pulled the shawl’s throw over her head. Her montrals stabbed at the fabric but eventually relented, and she was covered enough to obscure her face. Enfys dismayed at the lack of orange. “You too...” Ahsoka told her. “I understand if you’re unwilling to remove your helmet. I understand Mandalorian males are far more traditional in their beliefs than the women.”</p><p>“You’ve been around our kind?” Enfys asked, not even mentioning her true gender yet. She became perturbed, outright fearful that if she unveiled herself now, all would change – she wanted it to, but knew they had to escape first. There would be a time to reveal her face.</p><p>“For a time; a long time... I studied under Lady Bo-Katarn after I turned eighteen... after I left the Jedi Order,” she alluded. Enfys gasped under her helmet.</p><p>“No one leaves behind the Jedi Order... That’s never something I was told,” her masculine and modulated voice spoke for her; a part of Enfys wanted to remove it, wanted to show Ahsoka who she was if the Jedi could even remember who she was. But it had been so long, and with the revelation that so much had indeed happened to the Togruta, Enfys doubted she’d remember her at all. The mask remained firmly over her face, shrouding her visage in a bone-like and metal menace that she had used from her mother to strike fear into the hearts of the Empire.</p><p>“I did...”</p><p>A siren sounded off up the stairs and out of the door in the thick of Jedha City, the holy place. Enfys knew where she was almost immediately. She recognised the bouncing of sound waves off of surfaces into the receptors in her helmet and into her ears. The wind helped, and the direction of the siren while announced it behind the safehouse near the square; bouncing off of other buildings it took her only seconds to turn around again and look at Ahsoka as an Imperial interpreter began his tirade in one of the common tongues, not Huttese and certainly not Basic. Ahsoka looked as if she smelt his words before holding out her hand for a blaster pistol and shooting door mechanism beyond Enfys. Nest freaked, her eyes widening unblinking as she gawped at the new renegade Ahsoka tossing the blaster to the floor and trudging off to a side exit.</p><p>“Uncivilised...” she was muttering, and Enfys followed, hoisting the staff on her back once more, considering all she had seen in this new Ahsoka Tano. So much of her changed, and yet so much of her spoke to the troubled faction leader.</p><p>Enfys looked at her hand, and then looked to the exposed arm of the Jedi falling at her side as she held the cloak close around her with the other. She tried to obscure herself as much as she could. More than anything else as Enfys saw the traces of an old and expertly fashioned Jedi battle robe clinging to her perfect orange flesh, the rebel felt like a child again, wanting to hold onto the pretty woman’s hand and feel validated in the roguish feelings she had about women. This was it, her dreams and her wishes of Ahsoka Tano manifested, and yet the twenty-six-year-old felt more nervous than she ever had around the Togruta. She closed the gap between them as they filed into an ally busy with the clutter of the city’s mixed populace.</p><p>Up high and in advantageous positions, inspecting the whole crowd, Stormtroopers and Imperial Army Troopers observed the entire daily mass, watching for any sign of descent. Looking up, Nest found a long and imposing sight looming over her, Ahsoka and the whole city – an <em>Imperial</em>-class Star Destroyer parked directly above the whole perimeter of the city’s limits. Nothing escaped its shadow of a simplistic triangle shape. Enfys held herself close, realising this was as close as she had been to an <em>Imperial</em>-class in her life. In her dream, she had been a guest on a Venator; now she looked and felt minuscule and meaningless compared to the naval might of such an imposing warship.</p><p>“Try not to look at it like that,” Ahsoka told her, pulling her to walk parallel with her. The Togruta knotted her arm around Enfys, walking as if they were a couple to ensure her pace matched. “Act as if it’s normal; Star Destroyer rolled up three days ago.”</p><p>“It wasn’t here when my clan assaulted the last convoy...”</p><p>“The thing arrived <em>because</em> of the last attack on the Imperial Convoy. They’re searching for Saw. The Empire wants him dealt with,” Ahsoka informed her under her breath as they continued to move with the crowd. The more dejected and makeshift Enfys made herself look, the more at home the people around her shoved and made her feel. It was a perfect disguise.</p><p>“Saw’s gone...” Enfys told her, sure of her assumption. “The Partisans have a hideout in the desert; the remains of a small worship house that used to belong to the Jedi.”</p><p>Ahsoka’s sapphire eyes flashed at her, a sparkle caught in their starlight hues even in the shadow of the destroyer. “We’re working on that,” Tano told her matter-of-factly, and still holding on close to Enfys’s arm. It was all the marauder ever wanted, even given what felt like the tension of the situation. “Fulcrum, what’s your status? I need an exit?” She spoke into her commlink.</p><p>“Liana Hallik has been acquired. Safehouse is in Jacinto Square. Move there and await orders for extraction...” A masculine but sensual voice spoke over the wrist commlink in Ahsoka’s gauntlet. It felt somehow familiar to Enfys, somehow exotic or with added twang not unlike cooking spice. His exhumed sensuality she somehow recognised.</p><p>Ahsoka grimaced. “We’ll have to coordinate this fast – don’t let Mon Mothma be there when I arrive, Captain Andor. I want to speak to Davits as soon as I land,” she informed Andor over the line. Enfys recognised him now – Cassian Anor, Rebel Intelligence and the current Fulcrum. “Speaking of which we’ll need extraction... Fill me in at a safehouse, and keep quick about it Fulcrum this place is like a fusion cell. It’s going to blow before long,” she warned him, moving swiftly on through the crowd with Enfys in tow. The marauder heard her companion’s words, checking on the crowd all around them and the onlookers up high. Stormtroopers circled and overlooked the movement of people, almost as if they were filing them in and out of centres and areas of the city.</p><p>In the corner of Enfys’s ear she could hear a brutish and slurring-sounding voice gargle and then grunt. “You just watch yourself, slimo!” The thug yelled at someone. Enfys gripped hard to the lower half of her staff, praying that any of the Stormtroopers wouldn’t stop her and sense it was a weapon. She had always worked hard to integrate a mechanism to seclude the electrified blade.</p><p>“This way to the safe house,” Ahsoka whispered, pulling her hand back and then gripping her companion’s hand with swift tension. It was exactly how Enfys remembered her touch in her dreams. The orange flesh against her lightly gloved hand was all she had wanted since she was nine, since she had evaded the clones all around the inner workings of the Venator to get to say thank you to Ahsoka o the bridge. And now the woman was holding her hand, dragging her and pulling her to a safe house, under the watchful eye of Imperial Stormtroopers and other Army Troopers. There were far too many to take, even with a Jedi and just remembering the stories of what happened to the two Jedi from Lothal, Enfys decided she definitely did not want to throw Ahsoka into the fires of combat and to the attention of the Imperials.</p><p>“Don’t even think about it...” The Togruta whispered again, pulling Enfys quicker through the crowd.</p><p>“I wouldn’t dare, don’t worry,” Enfys shot back, eager to get out of the street in a hurry. Briskly, she caught up to Ahsoka, standing and barging parallel through the masses huddled around them – monks in red and an almost bald blind man with a half-staff gasped as she barrelled past them; the latter muttered something passive. <em>May the Force of others be with you!</em> Enfys heard in the back of her mind. “It’s too quiet...” She mused quietly to herself as she saw Ahsoka move to a siding in the corner of her visor. “Where are you going?” She called as beautiful orange fingers left her grips.</p><p>The rebel slipped into the ally archway with her and Ahsoka dropped to a crouch, her hood more over her head. She eyed Enfys and held her hand at the marauder’s at her staff. The Jedi shook her head slowly; patient and waiting as there came a sudden commotion from the crowd.</p><p>“Where is the safe house?” Enfys found herself asking as a fracas ignited between robed renegades and Stormtroopers in the street. People began to clear and more masked rogues joined the commotion. “Ahsoka? Where’s the safe house?” Enfys asked again, very much not wanting to join the fight.</p><p>“Just down the ally... At the end and near the next street...”Enfys stood up; just as two Stormtroopers approached them from the direction her guide had referred to. The Jedi remained on the floor as Enfys stood to her full height – they needed to get passed and the marauder could see orange fingers drifting slowly to her lightsaber hilts wrapped in cloth and stowed in her belt. Even Enfys could tell there was folly in it – she didn’t hear the troopers asking for identification or stopping them from continuing. Troopers outside of the ally and in the street were readying weapons, the tension between enforcement and the crowd of civilians rising to bubbling levels of hot anger. It infected the troops barring Enfys her way forward and all she could focus on was Ahsoka reaching for her blades. Through her visor, Enfys could tell Ahsoka was looking from the troopers’ feet to her eyes as she moved her hand slowly. Could she see the light shaking of Enfys’s helmeted head to tell her no? Even the sound of igniting lightsabers would oust her, commanding the attention of all the troopers now gathering in the street.</p><p><em>Don’t do it... Not here... </em>Enfys told her with her mind, hoping the Jedi could invade her thoughts and read them like they were words on parchment.</p><p>Ahsoka’s eyes didn’t respond.</p><p>“Scan docs... Now!” One of the Stormtroopers barked as the pair of them pulled up blasters.</p><p>Enfys couldn’t let Ahsoka expose herself, not now. To guard her and protect her, she commanded the older Togruta’s attention with her own hand, trying to fuel it with her inner and vulnerable femininity. This whole time she knew Ahsoka had thought her a man, but with her fingers she tried to convey her true gender, gripping the bottom of her electroripper staff. <em>I won’t let you endanger yourself...</em></p><p>The other Stormtrooper noticed Ahsoka reaching for her lightsabers in the cloth, pointing the barrel of his blaster at her. “Hands up! Stand up!” <em>No!</em></p><p>Her glaive ripped through the barrel of the authentic blaster pointed at Ahsoka, cutting through the durasteel as if it were fabric or wheat to a scythe. Before Ahsoka could get up, Enfys had already spun her staff into both her hands and was cutting through the left trooper with extreme prejudice, slicing through his plasteel armour and dismembering the soldier of his limb. The second, the one who had only spoken to the rebel, pointed his blaster at her head, her hood coming down. Ahsoka took her chance to intervene, her hand snatched away from her lightsabers and reaching out with the Force. The energy flowed from her fingertips, clutching the blaster in her extended grip and pulling it forcefully from the wielder’s hands. “What the..?” The trooper asked as he was left weaponless with Enfys turning to spot him. Another flail of her hands and the staff within them took the feet right out from under him, cutting him across his calves until he was on the floor. Enfys didn’t stop as she sensed Ahsoka get to her feet – the marauder indulged her half-Mandalorian side and stood on the trooper’s neck harshly, crushing his windpipe and killing him in an instant.</p><p>More troopers were coming as blaster bolts began to fire in the main street. Enfys’s attention became enthralled by a rebellion erupting between masked and robed civilians with probably stolen blasters and the Imperial Military. She wanted to join, to rebel against the Empire with them, but she felt Ahsoka’s hands on her right arm, tugging at her.</p><p>She was pulled into the comfort of a safe house, falling to her rear as Ahsoka sealed and deadlocked the sliding door. The Togruta pressed her back to it, sliding down to the floor too, sitting opposite to Enfys as she tossed her staff away and pulled the ragged cloak from off of her person. Ahsoka did the same and the lights of the entrance hall blooming into bright luminosity.</p><p>Here, Enfys could finally see her in perfect lighting.</p><p>Underneath the visage of her bothersome helmet, the full scope and beauty of the much older Ahsoka Tano reached her vision. And she was <em>beautiful</em>. A flash of her younger teenage self slipped across Enfys’s mind, her duel with Ventress saving her, but then the new reality of the Jedi became clear. Just as Enfys had noticed in the Partisan cell, she could clearly see now that Ahsoka’s montrals were much taller and grander, as curvy as her waist and more athletic thighs. Her splendid lekku now rested well below her bosom, still shorter than the elders of her species, but supple enough and slender to Enfys’s eyes. She could tell now why many other races and peoples in the galaxy regarded the tentacles and head tails (of which Ahsoka’s around her back was wider at the stem, like an underwater ray) as seductive and gorgeous organs or appendages. Whereas in the Clone Wars, Enfys had regarded her saviour as charming and roguish, much like her master, now the Jedi in her own right seemed physically alluring and beyond attractive. Even as she looked at the floor and breathed for a moment, collecting herself and her strength, Enfys Nest became totally taken aback by the pinnacle of a warrioress and woman. Whereas before Enfys had discovered her liking for women, she had only wanted to be like Ahsoka, and now she totally <em>wanted</em> Ahsoka Tano.</p><p>“You did... well, any other male of your clan or house would be proud of how you handled yourself there... You saved me,” Ahsoka thanked, reaching out with her hand to shake her protector.</p><p>“Wait...” Enfys heard her masculine-modulated voice utter from beyond her lips. Ahsoka’s expression almost popped a little, her eyes widening while Enfys reached around her poetry-etched helmet. “Could,” she began, peeling the helmet from off of her charcoal-tinned face and revealing her frizzy knot of wiry autumn hair. This was her true self, hopefully, one Ahsoka could remember from meeting her nine-year-old younger self. She handed Ahsoka her helmet and pulled the wire from her bun of hair, letting it frizz out and flow to hopefully show her in a more familiar light.</p><p>Ahsoka almost gasped. “Oh,” she softly spoke, holding Enfys’s helm and setting it onto the stoned floor next to her.</p><p>“You don’t remember me, do you?” Enfys dismayed, closing her eyes and feeling as if someone had shot and destroyed her heart. She’d thought of Ahsoka almost every day since she had been shipped back to Concord, infatuated with the idea that she had a saviour. Ahsoka was her dreams and aspirations.</p><p>She looked away, determined she was a stranger until she felt lukewarm fingers fumbling for her cheeks, pulling her face back. Ahsoka was leaning over her, her still fully lips beaming with pride and glee and her eyes fluid as they had been all those years ago – within them, Enfys could spot and sense the feeling of sameness, of recognition when looking at her darker skin, her incredibly wily hair and her cascading horde of freckles that dotted her cheeks and nose bridge. As Ahsoka smiled, Enfys found herself smiling, parting her clad legs and letting Ahsoka lean in between them. That same sense of sapphic flare and attraction that had first emerged when she was a kid now exploded into a full inferno in her heart – and this time Ahsoka looked at her not as her elder, but as a girl happy as the heavens to see her, and with a familiar sense of romantic sorority in her expression.</p><p>“It’s good to see you Enfys...”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Heartache</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ahsoka handed the heating and lighting unit to Enfys, letting her give it a try while the Togruta brushed her lekku forward and over her shoulders and stroking them tentatively as if they were organic strands of hair. Stuck with the lighting unit in her hands, Enfys froze as she became mesmerised by her saviour’s hands sensually and gently pulling and caressing her own head tails, pulling them down her body. Her orange eyelids closed and she breathed, taking what seemed to Enfys like the first rest she’d had in a little while.</p><p>She could sympathise. Much of the same lifestyle was applicable to Enfys too; what she wanted more than anything was to set the heat lamp to the side and scoot up close to the older warrioress and aid her in relaxing, letting their hands join together. It was not just that her white and blue-accented head tails were simply gorgeous, even in the low light drifting in from the windows, but that Ahsoka’s scale-like flesh was beautiful in its own right. As Enfys watched her hands move, wishing she was holding them, and wishing she was kissing them, and Ahsoka’s face and head tails, in addition, she failed to activate the unit in her hands.</p><p>Only Ahsoka played on her mind, enthralling her attention with such beautiful movements until there came a second where she noticed a flash of fiery blue catch her eyes from across their little sitting area. Enfys blushed profusely, suddenly trapped and caught by Ahsoka’s vision – her hands slapped the heat lamp and she gave it a thorough shake to get it going.</p><p>The small battery within made a distracting hum but it couldn’t overbear Ahsoka’s mild chuckle. And that was enough to make Enfys grin too.</p><p>“Did you know it was me under that mask? With that voice? With my skills?” Enfys asked, throwing a fair few questions at her saviour (now two-time saviour, even if Enfys had once returned the favour in the alley) with a playful look in her sepia-coloured eyes ringed with an inner hint of amber-yellow.</p><p>Ahsoka’s lips curled in a genuine smile, the years of her long life reflecting back at Enfys under the artificial and low light humming from the heat lamp off to the side. They were sitting on small flats of cushioned but broken chairs. Enfys looked deeply into the orbs of a vibrant sapphire blue clouded with the patterns of the glimmering orange light only a few shades brighter than her own flesh. As the marauder inspected those eyes and the years within, she found ring after ring of sun-kissed and water-dyed bleeding blemishing unfortunate events; some were totally unspeakable. The pathway into Ahsoka’s mind had once been a bridge unguarded and paraded, and now as Enfys looked into her eyes and observed the tense and still youthful lines of her smile, the rebellious swoop rider saw a lockbox shaped in a woman she was eager to know again. But she was one Enfys Nest didn’t know at all, still.</p><p>“I’d be lying if I said I knew it was you... Although I’d heard you were doing something with a gang of Rebels, that was a long time ago...”</p><p>“You must have run into a naive smuggler and his Wookie, right?” Enfys asked, remembering the shootout and confrontation on Savareen more than a few years ago now. It still held weight in her mind as one of her more thrilling escapades and she wished the Corellian well.</p><p>But Ahsoka shook her head. “Not at all. Your Cloud-Riders aren’t as subtle as you think, dear...”</p><p><em>Dear</em>.</p><p>Enfys had to turn away from the heat lamp revving and humming to the side of her to hide the serene blush of red underpinning her ash-hinted brown skin from Ahsoka as she tried her hardest to concentrate enough to make conversation. Ahsoka seemed to be both resourceful and more intelligent than Enfys had guessed the Alliance was. That was even if Ahsoka worked for the Alliance – since she most certainly seemed against Saw’s Partisans and Enfys’s Cloud-Riders were mostly the only other independent rebel cell now pledged to the coalition that had become the Alliance. Nest had heard Ahsoka refer to Captain Andor as ‘Fulcrum’, a moniker that plenty of intelligence agents in the netting of rebels had used in the past. Enfys had tracked them most of the time – no one often knew the identities of Fulcrum in the past. Hera Syndulla hadn’t to Enfys’s knowledge.</p><p>“And what about you? You seem to already know of my operations,” Enfys smiled, mustering the courage to move her rear and sit closer to her companion now, eager to listen. “I want to know as much as I can,” she beamed. “What’s Ahsoka Tano been doing all these years...”</p><p>Ahsoka bluffed a fake chuckle, Enfys hearing it as normal and sitting opposite to the Togruta, with their legs slotting between each other. Maybe it was the way Ahsoka stopped and stalled, failing to answer with any sort of speed or deep thought, or how her beautiful blue eyes evaded Enfys’s glance, but the latter knew her saviour wanted to be less than forthcoming. The rebel’s hand drifted forward, holding Ahsoka’s fingers, calling her attention upward to warm and brandy eyes. There was Enfys, clued in to what she knew she saw in the shapes that swam in her crush’s eyes, and her hand told Ahsoka that there was nothing to fear about what had happed – the tone of their seclusion in the safe house had now dipped into something lukewarm. Nevertheless, Enfys was there, holding onto Ahsoka’s hand and letting her knew she was there to listen.</p><p>“You don’t have to tell me, Ahsoka... I hardly think I’m one to ask given the reputation you must have heard my Cloud-Riders and I have,” Enfys spoke for herself. Ahsoka’s other hand came to their small pile of fingers and palms warm with the touch of one another and Enfys could hear the audible hitch in Ahsoka’s beautiful breath.</p><p>Her voice grew a little heavier, though.</p><p>“There was a bombing in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant not that long after the Occupation of Bakura,” Ahsoka confessed, the swirls of her eyes turning a little dire already. “Barriss was behind it...”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Anakin took her to the cell, knowing his apprentice would want to confront the Mirialan under Temple and Clone guard. On one side of the ray shield was a Pau’an male, his yellow and red eyes piercing even through the slits of the Temple Guard mask while on the other was Commander Fox himself, holding the dual blaster pistols in their holsters.</p><p>“I’m sorry, General Skywalker – Chancellor Palpatine instructed me to not permit anyone in the cell,” the clone commander stepped forward, his hand out to back the pair of Jedi away from the prison block. The Temple Guard turned his head, his hands moving to his foldable dualsaber the closer Fox got to Ahsoka and to Skywalker. “He wants to speak to the traitor alone and before anyone else is permitted.”</p><p>Ahsoka’s fingers tensed into gripped fists as she sensed the frustration in her master beside her. She was going in, no matter what any clone commander or Chancellor told to the contrary, and she could tell that Anakin next to her sensed her determination and need.</p><p>“Step away from the cell door, Commander Fox...”</p><p>It was the Pau’an Temple Guard. Ahsoka recognised him, especially more as he removed his ceremonial mask and displayed his milquetoast and lined hide with muted eyes and darkened facial markings that streaked from his eyes like soaked mascara. He had been there when Barriss had been presented before the indictment proceedings. He had been at the head of the coterie of Temple Guards with his beautiful yellow lightsaber drawn from one end of his folded weapon. Ahsoka had always found the folded lightsabers of the Temple Guards elegant and appealing since she was a youngling learning under the wizened and older instructors – if she did not want to fall into a duty of pathfinding and more distant law-keeping as a Jedi Knight like Master Kenobi had done in his youth, Ahsoka would have certainly pursued the same honour as the deep-voiced Pau’an.</p><p>“What the blast is this?” Fox was already arguing; Anakin was backing up the Temple guard with his own hand on his own saber as he ushered Ahsoka closer to the ray shield of the cell. “The Chancellor ordered..!”</p><p>“With all due respect to the Chancellor, this is a Jedi affair, Commander,” the Pau’an told him sternly, watching the Clone’s hands for signs of flinching or darting for his pistols. </p><p>Anakin was continuing to usher her to the cell, encouraging Ahsoka to get inside regardless of the order on the door. This was the first time she’d seen him outwardly defying the word of the Chancellor in a while; ever since his attitude against hers towards the officer named Tarkin in the business with the Citadel, Ahsoka had wondered if this time would ever come. And now she couldn’t help but smile a coy and pleased grin as she saw his cheering smile and eyes, his unspoken words entering her mind. He knew. He’d known all this time, and now he was telling her without speaking – this would be the last chance she would get to see Barriss, regardless of what she was going to say (Ahsoka hadn’t even formulated that yet, she was taking this day second by second, not even minute by minute).</p><p>“Go on Ahsoka,” he told her more blatantly when her feet failed to carry her to the control board.</p><p>“What about you, Master?”</p><p>She saw Fox reach for the commlink on his wrist as the Pau’an Temple Guard pulled out his lightsaber. Anakin’s hand gripped a whole of it, barring him from igniting the blade and skewering Fox as he mumbled the situation to the upstairs and call for backup. “We’re just fine here, Ahsoka. Go to Barriss. You’re okay.”</p><p>“Your Master speaks right, Padawan... You’re permitted on behalf of the Jedi Temple,” the helpful Temple Guard added.</p><p>“Fives, get Rex and a squad of the 501<sup>st</sup> and set up positions around the detention centre – do <em>not</em> let any Coruscant Guard within the complex but do not fire unless fired upon first,” Anakin spoke into his commlink, his tone serious and his eyes even more so. Commander Fox stopped talking as soon as he heard the full breadth of what Anakin was prepared to engage in. Something in Ahsoka made her shake as she heard her Master relay orders to Fives somewhere around the Temple – dearly, she hoped Fox simply held his hands up and relented rather than cause an incident with the Jedi. But she didn’t anticipate Anakin going this far for her; she had wanted to cry.</p><p>Her hands now trembling as she saw the green flesh of a Mirialan face through the red of the prison ray-shield, Ahsoka executed the release command and stepped inside as soon as the shield dissipated. Her legs turned to jelly as soon as she felt the grated floor under her.</p><p>“Ahsoka...” She heard Barriss speak in the still clipped and proper accent of her studious youth and background. She had the audacity to smile at her.</p><p>The Togruta held her hand out and reached out with the Force to the command console on the outside of the cell, tripping the hard seal with her senses until the cold durasteel blast shield sealed behind her and secluded them. Red emergency lighting bathed them in a rather sinister backdrop and when Ahsoka could see again, the smile Barriss had tried to warm her with had completely drained along with most of the colour in her face. On Ahsoka’s was a look of something between fury and righteous hatred. There was nothing in the woman she looked at that told her Barriss would try to smile again, but she didn’t read as scared – all Ahsoka could tell when probing her opened mind was nothing but shame. Where had that true and real shame been in the chamber of the court? Where had that shame been when she was betraying Ahsoka?</p><p>Palpable and tormenting silence became muggy between them as Barriss tried to hide from Ahsoka’s encompassing and piercing vision. Her heart began to pound in her chest, pulsing against her lungs and ribcage beyond and for the first time Ahsoka could feel, consciously, what true anger and betrayal felt like. On Mortis she had been in another mind, another state of understanding and remembered close to nothing about the whole experience as she had attempted to side against Anakin and Obi-Wan. Now, as she looked at Barriss ashamed and cowering in her eyes, Ahsoka knew what it really felt like to be angry with a white-hot reality and fury.</p><p>“I loved you...”</p><p>She could feel the glassiness in her eyes turn to bursting dams releasing into streaks of tears rolling down her orange-toned cheeks hued a dark red from the floor lighting. Her anger forced her fists to tense even further while her face became a mess of white-hot tears almost turning to steam against her flesh.</p><p>“Look at me!” Ahsoka bellowed at the top of her lungs, her eyes forced close and the tone of her voice almost shrieking as she exploded. “Look at me, Barriss!” She yelled again.</p><p>Finally, Barriss did.</p><p>“I loved you...” Ahsoka trembled again, her voice breaking and threatening to shatter totally as she threw it to the Mirialan in the orange jumpsuit. As furious as she was, it broke her heart to see Barriss in this sense of dress – she was a criminal, a traitor, an outcast. She had betrayed everyone, and yet now Ahsoka could not leave her now. “Why..?”</p><p>Barriss couldn’t speak, now with Ahsoka looking at her, with <em>her </em>asking into the madness that had resulted in the bombing of the Temple. What made it even worse is that Ahsoka knew why; she had watched the hearing and listened when Barriss had made her betrayal testimony against Anakin and against Master Luminara, and the whole Jedi Order. And yet Barriss knew what her now former lover was asking her. It was not why she had bombed the hanger, or why she had deceived the whole Council and Order, or not why how she had had the courage to masquerade as Asajj Ventress while doing it all. Ahsoka’s interrogation above the emergency lighting was far simpler and much more personal and tragic. She was asking her beloved why her; simply, why <em>her</em>.</p><p>Tears in Barriss eyes and down her face mirrored Ahsoka’s. There was nothing the traitor could have said to begin to justify her betrayal, nothing to condone how she could have framed the woman Ahsoka had thought she’d loved. The longer she remained silent, the more it stabbed away at Ahsoka’s heart, deep and penetrating incisions into her skin killing her by one upon one of a thousand cuts dealt to her through Barriss’s silence.</p><p>“I...” Barriss tried, but failed, looking at seeing the bound and constricting muscles of Ahsoka’s face like a little child who had been utterly smashed by the most foul of fake friends. That’s what Barriss had become to her – fake.</p><p>All of their love, their secrecy throughout the three years of warfare had come crashing down around them. The foundations of life together, of a future, had been turned to ash, surrounded by an infringing pyre constructed by Barriss’s own hands and her desperate betrayal.</p><p>“You didn’t care... Did you?” Ahsoka shot back at her, her collected emotions turning to passion and hot flames in her throat. She didn’t care anymore – Barriss hadn’t, so why should she continue? “Did you?!” She screamed. “It was all a lie, wasn’t it?! Huh?! Answer me Barriss!” Again and again Ahsoka screamed. Barriss’s tears dried up as she sensed it burning inside of Ahsoka. Quickly and all at once, a dark and twisted vision of the future erupted within both of them.</p><p>The dark durasteel walls of the prison cell melted away and both women found themselves on a landing platform made of dark grey and black bulkheads, a large passenger craft behind them with chromium wings stretched out. Surrounding and below the landing platform spewed geysers and spits of molten lava, with volcanoes scattered all around the hills and mountains ranging far and wide beyond the platform and facility beyond them. Barriss gasped as she experienced it, but Ahsoka didn’t seem fazed whatsoever as she concentrated and focused all of her emotions on Barriss. As her emotions turned into magma like the lava river flowing underneath their feet, intimidating and outright scaring Barriss to her now cowardly core, Ahsoka’s destroyed and perverted trust turned twisted and foul into the most profaned of anger imaginable. Her fury became like the envisioned surroundings, and Barriss grew grave indeed as she noticed Ahsoka’s hands move towards her belt, and the hilts of her green and yellow lightsabers hitched to it.</p><p>“Ahsoka...”</p><p>“It’s the duty of the Jedi to destroy the Sith,” Ahsoka spat at her, pulling her weapons from her belt and igniting both bright and righteous blades.</p><p>Barriss held out her hand, snapping the Force to her fingers and pushing against her lover with all she could muster. “Ahsoka, no! Please! AHSOKA!” She screamed, as loud as her lungs could manage as the spectre of volcanic winds gusted at the couple on the mirage of the landing platform. Ahsoka’s eyes turned from their beautiful blue to a sickly and dark apparition of yellow ringed in a hateful red.</p><p>To Ahsoka’s incredible surprise she found her lightsabers retracting slowly until they turned off completely and in her confusion she stared at her weapons. She could feel her anger overwhelming her, compelling her further down her path and preying on her foulest wants now – she reached out with her hands, dropping her hilts to the floor. The Force drifted to her fingers and Barriss levitated off of the floor, a steeled and crushing invisible grip around her throat choking the life from her for only an instant.</p><p>“Ah...soka...”</p><p>The Togruta lost consciousness immediately, a gloved hand waving around the side of her head and putting her under. Anakin caught her body as she fell and he held her close in his arms, cradling her and cuddling her with what looked like the trace of a tear in his eye. “Master... Skywalker...” Barriss called to him breathlessly as she fell to her knees on the floor, which turned back to the cold durasteel of the prison cell with the emergency lighting turning a dim yellow again.</p><p>Captain Rex and Fives were both behind him as Anakin hoisted Ahsoka into a bridal carry in his cradling and comforting arms. She murmured in his grasp. “Barriss...” She cooed and Anakin again hugged her paternally with an affectionate squeeze. Rex had his guns trained on Barriss while the exposed Fives gave all his attention to Ahsoka. Outside another ARC Trooper – Jesse – has his guns pressed against the back of Commander Fox while the Pau’an Temple Guard Barriss had arrived with stood at the red Clone’s front. His mask was removed and his cold, nine-yard stare stabbed deep into Barriss’s soul.</p><p>Anakin gave his own stare to Barriss before turning around and pausing. Rex rested his free hand on the crest of Ahsoka’s head, between her small montrals while Fives looked at her with glum concern.</p><p>“Will she be alright, General?” The ARC Trooper asked.</p><p>“She’ll be fine, Fives. Hopefully, she won’t remember any of this; the Jedi will take care of her,” Anakin reassured him before looking to the Pau’an.</p><p>“The Council will not be informed of what happened here, Master Skywalker, I can assure you,” the Temple Guard affirmed before Jesse dug his pistol into Fox’s back.</p><p>“And neither will the Senate nor the Chancellor, will they, Fox?”</p><p>The Coruscant Guard Commander grumbled, before relenting. “No... General,” he spoke to Anakin and him alone.</p><p>Anakin left the cell, with Rex and Fives filing out of it behind him and standing beside the control panel. The Jedi General gave a look to the Pau’an Temple Guard and the sinister red of the ray-shield passed between Barriss and all of the men gathered outside. She didn’t look at Anakin, but he could see her attention focused only on Ahsoka unconscious in his arms as he cradled her. “With any luck, you won’t ever leave this cell, while she becomes one of the most powerful Jedi you’ll never see...”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The details of Ahsoka’s recounting drifted and flowed with liberty and debatable grace, the ending of which had been retold her through Rex years later, but she only just managed to explain without breaking down fully into tears.</p><p>Enfys didn’t say much at all throughout the tale, and neither did she break form when Ahsoka appeared to have finished. The marauder didn’t wish she hadn’t asked, merely now she rotated herself and positioned her location right next to Ahsoka, resting her arm around the Togruta. Surprisingly, forcing Enfys’s heart to beat like the pulse of a turbolaser in her chest, Ahsoka nuzzled into her embrace, wrapping her own arms around the younger woman and holding onto her for warmth and affection. Something in her bones told the redhead that this was not a common experience, and hadn’t been for a large expanse of time. And Enfys could predict and expect more stories like the one of Barriss’s betrayal – never could the half-Mandalorian expect this olden eventuality. When she had met the pair, even she could estimate at the levels of love Ahsoka bore for her companion; the way she had thrown herself at Asajj Ventress in the prison had displayed just how much Ahsoka had cared for Barriss and her safety. To know the Mirialan had betrayed her so totally created a hole in Enfys’s heart for the Togruta.</p><p>“You’ve... You’ve been on your own for a while, haven’t you?” Enfys asked, pressing her cheek into the spacious crest of the Togruta’s head tails, caressing her shoulders and arms to comfort her.</p><p>Ahsoka reached to wipe tears from her eyes. “Not the whole time... There were two Jedi I found not that long ago, Kanan Jarrus and his apprentice, Ezra Bridger,” she explained, and continued on about how both were longer on the scene; yet another blow to Enfys’s care for her old saviour.</p><p>With her built-up courage, Enfys threw her caution to the wind and planted a soft and nervous kiss into the harder chitin of her companion’s montrals, and then bowed her head over to gift Ahsoka another on her orange and white-tattooed forehead with soft-heartened lips longing to express just how she felt. Enfys couldn’t even keep her eyes open. As she kissed Ahsoka’s flesh deeply, wishing their lips could join and Ahsoka could know the love and yearning the younger woman wanted to express, Enfys felt her heart punch against her ribcage.</p><p>“Enfys?” Ahsoka asked, moving all at once and almost rattling the armoured Cloud-Rider.</p><p>She was stuck frozen with her hands falling into Ahsoka’s and suddenly the Jedi was staring at her, and she at Ahsoka without anywhere else to turn. There was nowhere else to run away and cloak her feelings anymore. Ahsoka had chased and ran her down, now she was pinned, and almost completely out of moves.</p><p>“You...” She struggled, unable to think coherently anymore. She was yearning, pleading with herself to come out. “You don’t have to be alone, Ahsoka. At least, not at this moment...”</p><p>“Enfys...”</p><p>Sweet mother, the Cloud-Rider could not weave; moonstruck and out of her mind, thinking with her soul, Enfys sat stationary as she failed to notice Ahsoka leaning in. Before she knew it she was stumbling and falling back, and Ahsoka was on top of her, hands on either side of the younger redhead. The earlier blush made Enfys’s darker skin deepen with a faint rose pink underneath and Ahsoka chuckled a little as her lekku fell over her shoulders and dangled above the Human. Acting much on instinct, Enfys reached for one and brushing it back behind Ahsoka’s shoulder as if it were like strands of hair, accidentally making the Togruta blush too and bite her bottom lip. Enfys was younger, but not an incredible amount younger. Did Ahsoka like younger women?</p><p>There was not much time to play at guesswork. The Togruta bowed her head, both women blushing and their breaths turning to steamy pants as time slowed. Before Enfys could take stock of how close Ahsoka was, suddenly they were kissing, and Ahsoka was very much on top of her, and the redhead could feel her hands gravitating to her kisser’s hips, holding her just right. An innate sense indulgent glee of fanciful sort took hold of Enfys as she kissed back, tasting the bliss of Ahsoka’s lips that she had secretly fantasised about all throughout her formative years – now all her daydreams were breaking through to reality. The deeper they kissed, the more of Ahsoka she wanted to feel, and as she indulged herself, giving access of herself over to the Jedi, the heat lamp simmered down and fizzled out, leaving them in steamy darkness.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Eros</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> “You had us scared for a while there, Enfys,” Weazel greeted as the Cloud-Rider commander hopped out of the docking tube with a length and beautiful Togruta in tow.</p><p>Enfys relieved herself of her helmet and set it onto the wing of the cradle swoop. It had been a little under a day and already the half Mandalorian was happy to see her craft and her clan again. Each of the swoops, except for her own gorgeous Skyblade-330. At this point it would be already forgotten rubble on the salt flats of the Jedha desert, tangled up in the webbing that was a crashed Imperial TIE/ln Fighter. Somewhere in the mess of both carcases were the bodies of the TIE’s nameless and faceless pilot, and Callixido, one of her own. Enfys didn’t really say a word to Weazel, instead turning to take Ahsoka’s hand as she exited the docking tube.</p><p>The pair had raced out of Jedha in a stolen fighter, crammed into its tiny cockpit and holding each other loosely as Ahsoka flew the fighter away from standard patrol routes and through the atmosphere in time enough for the Imperials to barely notice them leaving. The Star Destroyer over Jedha city was none the wiser and no pilots were daring enough to follow them. Enfys and Ahsoka simply faded from the equation, the ground response still busy trying to find Saw. They’d have no luck in the city – Enfys knew her former business associate was nowhere near that dumb to hide in plain sight. He wasn’t good enough for it.</p><p>Ahsoka was.</p><p>Enfys’s eyes became enthralled by her curves as the slender and amorous Togruta bent down under the soft seal of the docking tube and clambered out to hold Enfys’s hand. The slender of her delicate touch transported the Mandalorian’s waking mind back to the hours they shared in the safehouse. Hands all over each other’s bodies, clothes and armour draped over wherever they could be, and Ahsoka’s montral horns reaching high into the swimming and warm air as human lips found every soft and responsive spot on her nude chest.</p><p>She couldn’t stop thinking about it. If she did for but a moment, Enfys thought the memories would erase themselves from her mind. She felt the sensation of a cold sweat bereft across her top lip, her bottom slipping between hungrier teeth as she observed Ahsoka standing up straight in real but slow and emotive time. How was this woman real? How had she existed for this long? Enfys didn’t know – she only wanted to know where she was going next.</p><p>Wherever that was, Enfys wanted to be right behind her, in her armour or not. She’d go with the orange-skinned alien woman to the ends of the universe if it meant being as close to her as she was now. All inhibitions had melted away in the safehouse, and now Enfys knew her deepest desires ruled her waking ambitions.</p><p>She wanted Ahsoka – she wanted Ahsoka <em>again.</em></p><p>“Enfys?”</p><p>“I’m fine, Weazel,” the commander told him bluntly. “I trust you managed to move the takings? Damage?” She asked, straight to the point as her Jedi companion took her leave already, heading for the Mess. Enfys knocked on the wing of the nearest swoop, moving to the largest craft in the launch bay – the cradle.</p><p>The damage wasn’t severe, some scuffing and laser charring around the bowl-shape of the chassis, the durasteel had boiled and melted from the lasers of the Imperial escorts, but for the most part the rest of the swoop fleet were in shape. Enfys inspected them all, arriving at the cradle lastly and sliding her gloved hand around the controls and the flight wings. The durasteel ailerons were dented in several places and some shearing had taken place, fraying the alloys into two thinner strips, but work could be done to fix these problems in no time at all. Every time Enfys felt her way around the metal, around the chassis, she found another aspect of it entirely different.</p><p>“They’ll fix up fine in no time, Enfys,” Weazel assured her. “The haul was good. Already got buyers in several systems and enough left over to devote.”</p><p>“Send all of the supplies along with an envoy to Mon Mothma.”</p><p>“What?” Weazel almost exclaimed.</p><p>“Benthic will do, he won’t like it but he’ll go along with, and Mothma could use the support going forward,” she told Weazel with an easy yet authoritative voice. She noticed the small man tense next to her as she ran her hands all around the hull of the massive swoop – Enfys didn’t care, not really. Her word was law here, with him.</p><p>“Enfys...”</p><p>“That’s an order, Weazel.” She stood up tall before him; even without her helmet to cover her rather youngish visage, she could still intimidate, or inspire. “Answer me this; am I still your leader, Weazel?”</p><p>He capitulated, remembering why she was. “Yes, Enfys,” he told her without almost any hesitation. He removed his own helmet and set it on the stabiliser wing of the cradle. He barely shared his naked face, but Enfys inspired him to join her – there was a beat and a break in the conversation, unspoken words passing between each other. “Benthic will take the supplies to Mon Mothma and the Rebels... I trust your new companion can supply us with the location of their headquarters...”</p><p>Enfys returned to examining the outer hull of the swoop cradle. “Don’t pry Ahsoka, Weazel.”</p><p>“You mean to tell me that you embarked this ship with <em>the</em> Ahsoka Tano?”</p><p>Her hands rounded a curve, feeling the dent and charred hole from the point of impact with a round from a laser cannon. The red of her cradle swoop had boiled and burned away, leaving a hefty wound in the base of the hull – in the absence of her Skyblade-330, Enfys now devoted her attention to the remaining big bird. Already she missed her powerhouse of a personal swoop.</p><p>“I mean to tell you that I brought Ahsoka Tano onto my <em>Aerie</em>, and that she is to be allowed to roam the ship freely without incident, am I understood, Weazel?” She asked.</p><p>“Perfectly, Enfys.”</p><p>“Thank you, friend.”</p><p>“Do you require anything?”</p><p>She moved her hands along the curvature of her larger swoop, losing herself in the feeling of the durasteel and the lives. Suddenly the material of the craft disappeared as well as the surroundings of the <em>Aerie</em> launch bay. The walls completely dissolved, moving and shifting; the cold of the garage bay turned to warmth and cosiness. Her liveship became a small cabin-like safehouse, with a small heating unit in the central column of the room. The curves of her swoop cradle became the curves of Ahsoka Tano. Enfys was no longer inspecting the chassis of her property; she was back in the main room, her hands all over her saviour, glossing over all of her and then devoting all of her human attention to her Togruta lover. Ahsoka’s body became a marbled temple, like the one on Coruscant to Enfys, with each of her curves and bodily lines, her dimensions, something to be cherished and heralded. That was how she’d treated her lover’s body in the safehouse.</p><p>Hands came to Ahsoka’s love handles, holding her hips as if they were the designated lifts on a piece of hot cargo or the handles on the stick of a pair of flight controls to one of her swoops. In the low light, the faint glimmer coming from the raw yellow and orange heating unit, Ahsoka’s skin tones almost glowed. The way her white and blue lekku fell onto her naked torso, covering the curves of her nude bosom made Enfys lose herself – the way she fantasised about it now, her hands feeling similarities between her lover and the vehicle. The feeling of hard durasteel through her padded combat gloves completely eroded away until she believed it was the softness of Ahsoka’s flesh, every small nook of her body, all in Enfys’s touch.</p><p>She had dreamed about this exposure to her saviour, to Ahsoka. And now that she had it, it was all Enfys Nest could think about – all she ever wanted to think about.</p><p>“No, Weazel, I think I have everything I need.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She found Ahsoka in the mess, among a lot of the Riders. Benthic ‘Two-Tubes’, Chussido, Silvasu Fi, and Pruno Jant were just a few; all were breaking into some of the Juma Juice and miscellaneous MREs that the Cloud-Riders had pilfered from the supply bays of the sacked Arquitens. As soon as Enfys entered the small canteen of the <em>Aerie</em> she heard a bolster of laughter in different tongues from the central table. She merely propped herself against one of the support pillars and tried to hide her smile in the furls of the fur of her coat. The rugged pelt brushed individual clumps against her youngish and girlish cheeks, only exacerbating her smiling lips among freckled features. Her eyes swam warm waters as she looked at Ahsoka Tano, keeping her emotions close to the vest and trying to down play her simply stunning smile.</p><p>Looking at it, Enfys knew she would die for that smile. History relived itself all around her, while Ahsoka’s face phased in and out of her current beauty and her younger self. Enfys saw both versions of the Togruta catching her glancing from across the room and sparks flew between them like they had before.</p><p>Even after the story about what Barriss had done, Enfys could tell that Ahsoka wasn’t defeated – not even Order 66 could have broken her, not the rise of the Empire in the Republic’s stead. Enfys knew nothing could kill this woman; despite all she had been through, she was still quick to accept an invitation to the <em>Aerie</em>, quick to mingle with the Mandalorian’s crew and family, and would be quicker to get back to the fight.</p><p>“Enfys?” Moda Maxa was behind her, a small data-pad in hand with a beeping alert front and centre. “A data packet from Saw, Enfys; it must be his way of apologising for what happened to Callixido...”</p><p>“Thank you, Moda,” Enfys almost whispered; a hand to take the packet, and the other on her companion’s shoulder. The other Human didn’t budge to the contact, this was how they all acted around each other – the Cloud-Riders were family at heart. “Saw Gerrera can count his last bridge burned, I think. He’s on his own from now on,” she finalised, deleting the data stream from the pad and handing it back to Maxa.</p><p>The masked female Human didn’t say anything nor give anything away from underneath her cloth cloak. “Can we afford to leave Jedha?”</p><p>“Saw’s quick to sell us out to the Imperials to deal some non-effective damage,” Enfys told her, her mind hurtling back to the battle in the skies near the Holy City. Callixido took a stray laser bolt to his chest behind her and fell from the bike. She’d lugged his dead body resting against her back for several hundred feet until she had had to bail out of her Skyblade-330. She stood by her convictions – Saw had burned his last bridge, and she would aid him no more. “He’ll find his way and we will find ours,” she told Moda as a final word.</p><p>“And where is our way, Enfys? Between Grand Admiral Thrawn and what the Empire’s done to Jedha and worlds like it...”</p><p>She looked to Ahsoka, smiling with her family and telling more and more stories. She hadn’t really changed since the Clone Wars; Enfys knew she hadn’t changed and that within the mature and wonderful shell of the older Ahsoka Tano was the same woman. She was the same woman a small and brave Enfys Nest had developed a crush on after she was saved by her, and used that crush to realise her sole affection for womenfolk, her sole attractions to womenfolk. There was no other that could compare for Enfys. She took off her overcoat and threw it to one of the tables; she’d collect it later.</p><p>“Our way is as Rebels, Moda,” Enfys told her friend, moving to take her seat next to Ahsoka. There was an empty part of the benches next to the Jedi Legend and before Benthic. Enfys eyed the spaced and decided she needed to be sitting there next to her desire. “Take your leave and get some rest. I imagine that things are going to change soon, and move a lot faster.”</p><p>“What makes you say so?” Maxa had to ask, detecting the gravity within Enfys’s tone. She’d been on the ground on Jedha – usually the Cloud-Riders didn’t stay long enough to see the situation within the city, and Saw wasn’t even there anyway.</p><p>“Protocol 13 has been declared on Jedha, and I don’t want to think about what that means...”</p><p>    </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“So much for deflecting blaster bolts, eh?” Enfys teased, wrapping the bandage wrap around the upper section of Ahsoka’s left arm, spraying some Bacta on the wound she’s sustained back on Jedha escaping the last of Saw’s Partisans. Enfys hadn’t noticing it in the low light of the safehouse – the red of the graze had blended in with the orange of her lover’s skin tone but now the half Mandalorian could see where a blaster bolt had just grazed gently and seared Ahsoka’s arm.</p><p>“It’s nothing, Enfys...”</p><p>“It doesn’t look like nothing, Ahsoka,” Enfys teased all the more. “I thought you Jedi were experts at deflecting anyway.”</p><p>Ahsoka pouted, her younger and less mature years coming to the forefront of her face as her lips expanded and looked almost twice their size; even like this the older Togruta looked simply adorable and desirable. Enfys couldn’t quite grasp how much older her lover was than her, not that it even mattered to either of them. But in a situation like this, Enfys took charge and even seemed to be the wisest of the pair. She kissed the blazing red mark of Ahsoka’s arm, letting the woman wince under her breath. Enfys saw the twitch in her lips but then soon curled as the Cloud-Rider wrapped it up neatly; using that medical knowledge she had gained from the academy to good use.</p><p>“There were a lot of them, y’know...” Ahsoka began, still semi-pouting and grimacing at her companion. They were both a little more stripped down – Ahsoka was clad in her undershirt that left her arms completely bare while Enfys dressed her lover’s arm in her own armoured top, with the bony communication panel resting above her bound and restricted chest. Both wore slacks too and rested against the wall of Enfys’s personal sparring space neighbouring her cabin. The barracks of the <em>Aerie</em> was oily and compact, rather hotter than the rest of the ship due to the messed up wiring of the heat exchanger but no one ever paid it any mind. “And plus, I was distracted,” Ahsoka played coy; looking up into Enfys’s younger but mellow whiskey eyes.</p><p>“Distracted? I never thought Jedi got... <em>distracted</em>.”</p><p>“Oh you’d be surprised, Enfys.”“Really? How surprised?”</p><p>Their eyes danced together in the space between them, both women wishing to restrict that space indefinitely and skip right to the point in time that they both wanted and knew was inevitable being this close and talking this way. Enfys’s hands moved away from Ahsoka’s arm and found her hips and the crest of her back. She wanted to hold her close, almost cradling the legendary Jedi, just to look into her inviting eyes still and listen to more of her stories. Their time in the Mess had never made Enfys laugh and smile so much, hearing about the behind the scenes of Ahsoka’s time with a Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and other Jedi of legend. Enfys still remembered their names, which had in turn made her guest smile back all the more. Now that pent up emotion was begging to come out.</p><p>“More than a little,” Ahsoka continued to dodge, coyly. Her own hands and fingers trickling up the beads of thin air to thread themselves within the messy and scrunched curls of her lover’s beautiful auburn hair. “But you... I’m not a Jedi anymore.”</p><p>Enfys smiled a toothy grin, her head bowing more than a little, her smile exacerbated again as it beamed twice the size of Ahsoka’s. The rest of the galaxy had blown away and they were boxed into their own portable universe, only the size of Enfys’s quarters. The oily heat and the faux humidity did nothing, only made them wanted to shed more clothing. Enfys had to giggle.</p><p>“I don’t suppose not being a Jedi comes with many perks does it?” Enfys teased again. “Some... amenities for the average, beautiful Togruta wayfarer. Or then again... You’d think you’d earn some severance pay from the Grand Army of the Republic.”</p><p>“What’s a veteran to do these days...?”</p><p>“You should sue, Ahsoka.”</p><p>“Yes...” She drifted her lips and mouth edging closer to Enfys’s. “Then again, I could get used to this kinda thing...”</p><p>Enfys hummed, her body losing itself and her hands clutching around the older beauty with almost all her hearty desire. She’d never been this happy before, in the strangest of times – but the rest of the galaxy was outside, and Ahsoka was in<em> here</em>.</p><p>“I’m sure you could..."</p><p>“It helps not having a vow of celibacy to keep...”</p><p>No more talking. No more words. Enfys heaved a little and swerved, turning them both around and pushed her lips to collide with Ahsoka’s. The musk of the air made her sweat under her insulted fleecy shirt, but Ahsoka made her sweat all the more when her hands came to Enfys’s cheeks. She tantalised the younger warrior, kissing her as sweetly as she had done in the safehouse living room, and then even sweeter still. Ahsoka tasted of persimmons, spicy but so mellow and sweet. She made Enfys blush into the kiss, a juicy red taking over her muted tan cheeks while the rest of Enfys wanted to shake from the contact again. Stars, Ahsoka was everything she’d ever dreamed all over again – she was cool, confident and charming in how she moved, how she held Enfys back and how her hands moved. From cheeks to jaw to neck to shoulders and then lower still. Before Enfys could even compute what was going on around her, Ahsoka’s hands came to the hem of her top and were lifting it up. Higher and higher over her scarred and battered tummy, then over her garb-wrapped bosom and to her neck.</p><p>“Take it off,” Ahsoka asked her, nipping at her lip with wanton teeth and kisses.</p><p>Enfys breathed heartily, another quick peck of Ahsoka’s lips and the brush of their noses together. “Take yours off too then...” She breathed and begged; her hands came around the small arching base of Ahsoka’s flexible spine and clutched at her undershirt. “Give it to me, Ahsoka...”</p><p>As soon as her arms were out of the fluffier sleeves and Enfys had her top wrapped around her neck and head, her knotty hair scrunched within the webbing of her fleece, Ahsoka pulled her closer. Enfys was powerful in all aspects, dominant with her women, withholding against them, but as Ahsoka flexed and reached for her belt, the half Mandalorian was left helpless and suddenly gasping. The Togruta’s hands at her waist, then helping her out of her top, it made her weak all over. Ahsoka’s lips took her next, enveloping the Cloud-Rider in warm protection, with the bubbling film of humidity making her sweat as her naked body found the air. Enfys breathed, but couldn’t bring herself to speak in the break between kisses. When Ahsoka’s hands darted to her belt’s buckle again, Enfys took her chance and raced for the hem of Ahsoka’s top.</p><p>“No... This first...” Enfys demanded, tugging harder than the force against the rugged buckle of her torn and olden belt.</p><p>Ahsoka had to relent; Enfys forced her. They were both powerful women, their energies coming together and clashing against one another for dominance like two turbolaser batteries of capital ships. Just when Enfys relaxed, pulling Ahsoka’s undershirt over her horned head, revealing her beautiful eyes and orange and white complexion all over again, the hungry Togruta pushed herself forward with all her of her might. She pushed Enfys to the wall, the former-Jedi’s haft hands hard against her naked shoulders, her teeth gravitating to her neck.</p><p>“Stars!” Enfys swore.</p><p>She felt Ahsoka’s reeling giggles hit her barren neck, a warm exhale of lusty breath to tantalise her pores and her senses. The hum of the hyperdrive rattled her box of a room, and droned on all around the younger woman, but Ahsoka kept her attention in the rapture of her mind, devotion unlike anything Enfys had wagered before.</p><p>“Take your binder off... You don’t need to hide anything from me...” Ahsoka half-begged her, a sly finger tracing down from collarbone, through wrapping garb restricting Enfys’s bosom and down to the dip and curve of her angular navel.</p><p>It was before Ahsoka had returned to her belt, and the Togruta was looking at the Human in the faint and bad lighting of the small doo, but Enfys could see her coy smile. Those hungry eyes were almost ravenous as she saw Ahsoka bite down on her bottom lip. She truly was letting herself go; Enfys almost trembled for the first time with a woman. She hadn’t even been with all that many, none could come close to what she knew she wanted in a mate and truly didn’t know if Ahsoka could even measure up that much. But as she Enfys caught the flashes of Ahsoka’s impeccable eyes scanning her strong, scarred and nude form, Enfys’s core rattled her, and she began to sense wetness between her thighs. Ahsoka kissed her neck again, a gentle nibble letting Enfys know she was still real, still here, and Ahsoka was still with her, making love her to body with hands and lips.</p><p>But still Enfys hesitated, her hands quivering at Ahsoka’s hips.</p><p>“What’re you afraid of? Enfys...” Ahsoka breathed, kissing her again at the corners of her mouth. The half Mandalorian bit her lip again, taking Ahsoka in for a desperate kiss and pushing back against her body.</p><p>“I’m not afraid... But no one’s ever seen me like that... Like this,” Enfys struggled, her hands not knowing where they were going at all anymore.</p><p>For once in her sex life she simply let her partner take hold of her and her body then rode out the rest. Her insecurities took hold of her hands but Ahsoka held them for her and moved them back to her waist, letting her hold her there. The Togruta hushed her partner, once more soothing her with kisses – it was a welcome change to the chaos they’d charged away from on Jedha. Even with the hum of the drive core and hyperdrive rumbling faint and cool within the walls, Enfys felt at ease enveloped in Ahsoka’s embrace. Here she was, saving her all over again.</p><p>“There is chaos, Enfys. There is harmony. Let me be your harmony right now,” Ahsoka told her with a breath like a wind and a melodic ring to how she spoke. Ahsoka Tano <em>did</em> feel and sound like harmony, Enfys was powerless to resist her.</p><p>As Ahsoka remained to feel her way around her lover, Enfys moved her hands around her back, tracing up the length of her bulging and intrepid spine to the knot in her bindings. She pulled at them as Ahsoka distracted her attention with loving lips, all over her. In the haze of all that was happening between them both, Enfys didn’t notice the fully naked state of her torso until she could feel the oily heat against her bosom, the odd sensation of a damp air brushing against her side. “Oh, Ahsoka,” Enfys sighed, her lips taken hostage yet again.</p><p>They tumbled against the wall again, the Togruta guiding them both to the door of the bathroom unit – Enfys’s hand fell against the door control and pressed for dear life, granting her and her lover access. “It’s too hot...” Enfys gasped, tugging at Ahsoka’s beltline and bringing her in as they both began to fully undress below the waist.</p><p>Each woman pulled at the other’s belt, stripping her of it and then wrestling with the waistline, getting her to shed the armoured clothing pants and leggings. Suddenly both Enfys and Ahsoka stood, mirroring each other, in only their pants. Enfys reached behind her and turned on the shower, spontaneity taking hold of her as well as her incredible apprehension to the liquid heat clinging to her rugged and scarred body.</p><p>“Enfys...”</p><p>“Shower with me, Ahsoka... It’s too hot, and I want you wet,” Enfys told her partner with a ragged and nebulous arid touch to her tongue. The water was already shooting out as she snaked her hand down the taller Togruta’s navel and between her thighs.</p><p>The Cloud-Rider had been almost anxious before, now she was hearty, bordering on the needy. She wanted Ahsoka; she needed her, and now was growing desperate enough to handle what she wanted. It was everything she hadn’t had in the safehouse, which was not much, but Ahsoka had made Enfys need to have it. She seized Ahsoka’s lips for her own with ravenous fervour, while keeping her hand purposefully placed between her lover’s thighs. The Togruta jerked, her own desire bubbling over and wanting to break free – she pushed Enfys into the jet stream of the shower and let the water wash over the Human woman, soaking her frizzy and static hair all down her tanned back. Ahsoka’s lekku graced against and past Enfys’s naked chest, hands all the more hungry and exploring again over each other’s form. The heat didn’t dissipate, even as the water turned from hot to cool against their skin. Enfys’s hand didn’t falter, tracing against the inside of Ahsoka’s athletic yet supple thighs, reaching for what she wanted most now. She didn’t want to keep control, not at all. Her fingers traced between Ahsoka’s folds, feeling her own wetness and more she did, the more of a reaction Enfys felt herself letting loose.</p><p>“You’re so warm, Enfys.”</p><p>“You’re getting <em>warmer</em>, Ahsoka,” she countered, her fingers beginning to move. Ahsoka winced into her grasp, but did not relent or yield her body in the way Enfys thought she would. Both were too used to calling the shots in this position to relent power or control. But Enfys could tell that Ahsoka liked a challenge like this; just in the way she was holding herself, she could tell.</p><p>Ahsoka countered her back, slamming the Mandalorian against the cool metallic bulkhead wall and pinning her there with hands coming to rest either side of her head. In an instant Enfys had nowhere to go, her hand still fixated around Ahsoka’s sex, still pleasuring her there with the clutch and curve and movements of her intricate fingers in subtle and sublime motions. Ahsoka cooed in response to her lover’s matrices. Enfys smiled in response, the heat in her chest rising to new heights even with the cool water soaking her hair and her back, radiating the cold tickle through her chest to make her nipples mildly erect. Ahsoka took one into her hand and leaned, the crest of her montrals resting against Enfys’s shoulder as she took her lover’s nipple between her teeth and coaxed the half Mandalorian to retreat, to release a shuddering moan. It was music to Ahsoka’s ears, her hands taking hold of what she wanted as the shower created a hot and erotic mist between and around the pair of them. Enfys soon began to wail, her silent and stunned sexual demeanour changing to a melodic siren. The woman’s fingers paused and failed, and Ahsoka knew it there and then – she had won their small and erotic battle.</p><p>Enfys was hers.</p><p>The Togruta smiled to herself, kissing her lover’s nipple and breast as her hand removed itself from between Ahsoka’s thighs. Enfys gave up, enthralled and possessed by her lover now. Ahsoka had her on a thread of string.</p><p>“Ahsoka...” Enfys begged; the former-Jedi knew exactly what she was wanting.</p><p>Her tongue silenced her, while her hands took hold of the Cloud-Rider at her waist and slowly slipping down her navel. She had her trapped with nowhere to go, the water only making it easier.</p><p>“Come here,” Ahsoka told her, gripping her waist and pulling their cores closer.</p><p>Enfys railed again, her front hitting Ahsoka and her shoulder blades knocking against the durasteel of the bulkhead wall. The water continued to soak her naked body; passing back into warmth again as she felt Ahsoka’s fingers pushing against her labia and then rubbing sweetly. It was bliss entering her lower folds, filling her up and she took as much as she could all at once – it was Ahsoka. Stars, it was Ahsoka.</p><p>She recoiled around her lover’s fingers, Enfys’s whole body shuddering when she could feel them enter her, parting her folds and delving into her wetness. It was a sensation on a level that Enfys had not felt in a while, in another realm to what she was used to – she felt everything of it. Ahsoka’s mere fingers destroyed here inhibitions and suspended her disbelief. She had to moan, the very essence of her pleasure extracted by Ahsoka’s fingers gently delighting her sex, running along her folds and soaking in her wetness. Not even the shower’s waters could rid Ahsoka of her lover’s wetness. The more she felt the silk press between her fingers, the further she wanted to push Enfys along the track of her own pleasure and lust. Her body heat was tenable, palpable, Ahsoka could feel it as if they were both of one mind – in her most primal want, the former-Jedi coaxed her partner, touching and probing Enfys’s mind with her own through the stretch of the Force.</p><p>The intense sense of pleasure, feeling how Enfys felt, guided the direction of Ahsoka’s fingers. They curled upward within her lover, her palm placed gently against the mound of her sex. Enfys almost telepathically told her partner where to touch her next, how to touch her too. The heat continued to rise, without any sign of stopping.</p><p>“Oh, stars! Ahsoka...” Enfys whispered, her lips caught between her lover’s teeth while her lower folds quivered all around her fingers. The deeper within her Enfys could feel Ahsoka stroking, almost tickling with her beautiful fingers, the more the Cloud-Rider wanted. “More...” She begged. “Please,” Enfys cooed to Ahsoka’s touch, her sex soaking with wet secretion as she rocked and bucked her hips to her lover’s movements. Enfys felt the ripples of her sex’s recoiling all throughout her body; a feedback loop that sustained her, and pulled her core and her sex along on a beautiful trail of pleasure that beaded her helpless libido. It was like dancing with a Gundark, an intricate back and forth of movements. Ahsoka anticipated every subtle edge of Enfys’s body, stringing her along the whole time with her fingers delving even deeper into her wet euphoria and stroking along her sublime inner walls.</p><p>“I didn’t expect you’d be <em>this</em> loud,” Ahsoka teased, a gently nip at Enfys’s nipple with her thumb and forefinger.</p><p>The way her lekku draped down the slender dimensions of her frame made Enfys swoon again; she attempted to reach forward for a grip and a handful of Ahsoka’s breast, but the Togruta countered her, sensing her movements before the half Mandalorian could even engage. She smirked as she pinned Enfys’s hand to the wall again and licked her way around the cape of her exposed and wet neck.</p><p>“Impatient.”</p><p>Enfys’s breath hitched for a few notches. “Impatient?” She moaned. “Me?”</p><p>“Keep this up and you’re going to come too early,” Ahsoka breathed, pecking her lover’s lips and slotting in a third finger between the slick wetness of her folds. “You don’t expect me to let this pass too quickly, do you?”</p><p>She was something else entirely, and all of Enfys’s erotic dreams were coming back upon her, budding between her thighs and letting Ahsoka stir them as she pleasured her lover’s sex. But she was right; at this rate, Enfys wouldn’t last, and suddenly she wanted to. She wanted a whole lot more. And sensed Ahsoka did too.</p><p>The Togruta pulled at the flesh of Enfys’s leg, right at the joint and hitched her up to the waistline. “What are you doing?”</p><p>“Taking what’s mine,” Ahsoka told her with iron-clad authority. Enfys’s chest rumbled as if the <em>Aerie</em> had past into a plasma storm.</p><p>“What’s yours?” She repeated in question.</p><p>“Mhm, you bet your ass it’s mine. I think you’ll like its new owner too; I bring with me some perks I’m sure you’ll find enjoyable, Enfys Nest.” Ahsoka kissed her again, before lowering into a crouch. Enfys tried to protest, tried to close her legs and protect her darling sex, but Ahsoka’s hands were more than a little forceful in keeping them parted. The next sensation sent Enfys flailing into a whole new dimension of pleasure and lust. The sensation of Ahsoka’s lips and tongue meeting the sodden flesh of her trembling entrance and wanton clitoris. Nest saw stars, and dared to move her hands to hold onto Ahsoka’s montrals. She couldn’t hold on much longer.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Farewell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Here it is! The final chapter! Thank you to anyone and everyone who has read this or will read it, what started as a need to write Enfys and Ahsoka in erotica soon snowballed into mild plot with a cutesy but tragic Barrissoka sideship. But I have loved writing every sentence of this fic. Again, thank you to anyone who has or will read.</p><p>Please check out the full series this is a part of and stay tuned because I'll be adding more Ahsoka and Rey-centric wlw stories to it. I want to make some more Trace x Ahsoka content bc I feel like they're soulmates as well as a Rey x Shara (Poe's Mom) oneshot for laughs that could be hot. Please stay with it if you want more wlw Star Wars. </p><p>Also please leave comments if you enjoyed this, as well as if you liked the little tease at the end. I will definitely be following that up.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Her ass was Ahsoka’s.</p><p>In no time Enfys became a mess against the back bulkhead wall of her feeble shower shooting the jet stream onto her naked body. The muted brown of her skin glistened in the film of warm water turning cool once again, trickling down her form and then onto Ahsoka’s front. Her lekku parted as the older lover flicked them behind her brought and muscular shoulders. In fact, this was the first time since she was child that Enfys had really taken in all of Ahsoka’s Tano muscular and blemished form. Her abdomen was chiselled like gilded marble, cracks as muscles raking up from her navel like a beautiful board for Enfys to touch. The supple flesh of her athletic but ample breasts shimmering under a film of lucid water made the half Mandalorian almost lose herself to a haze of lust working its way across her vision.</p><p>She simply could not help but lower her trembling and wet hands to grip softly around Ahsoka’s horns, caressing the subtle cartilage and bony texture of her montrals as if to use them as handles while the elder woman parted her lips and widened her mouth.</p><p>Enfys dared to look down quickly, her eyelids almost clasped shut to protect herself and her lusty desires. Her flailing tongue through parted and damp lips quivered along with her sex when she saw Ahsoka mirroring and returning her glance, keeping eye-contact while her hands wrapped and snaked all over her strong and hefty thighs to hold her place. Legs parted before Ahsoka, Enfys tried to withhold her hitching breath, holding the flesh of her folds back at her mound with a trembling hand.</p><p>The sensitive and guiding Togruta licked her lips, gently directing Enfys’s hand away from her mound and up, coaxing the heated Cloud-Rider to gripping at her own bosom erotically.</p><p>“Perfect,” Ahsoka teased, licking her lips again and clearing them of the shower water. Her smile made the Human’s folds widen to her touch, sensual fingers holding her open and still slathering her lower folds with indisputable arousal. Enfys’s beading wetness slicked her entrance, still begging for Ahsoka’s tongue now more than her fingers – she could feel her whole body tighten to the touch as well, her rear clutching as she felt Ahsoka’s hands wrap around her bottom.</p><p>“Stop... Teasing me...” Enfys struggled.</p><p>As if fulfilling some erotic paper dream, parting her own legs as she crouched at her lover’s lower half and daring to display her own darling cloister below, Ahsoka planted a trailing and commanding kiss on her ward’s nude thigh. “But it’s so easy, Enfys.”</p><p>The Cloud-Rider commander huffed, stuck up on the heat and burning desire from her slick arousal. Ahsoka was almost indoctrinating her to reverse her nature – she’d never bent the knee like this for another woman, but Ahsoka was all that her dreams were made of. It had been an erotic fascination, a fantasy bordering on an obsession as she was growing up. Her teenage and formative years always harkened back to Ahsoka forming her baseline in feminine attraction; Enfys had spent so many nights wondering what she was like to be with. And now she had it, and Ahsoka had essentially taken her behind and made it her own. The sensation of orange fingers owning her thighs and rump continuously forced Enfys to quiver, keep her legs parted as if she was straddling Ahsoka’s wanton mouth.</p><p>“You’re evil,” Enfys cursed, gripping her own chest and biting down on her bottom lip.</p><p>“Evil? Me? Hmm, are you sure?” Ahsoka continued to tease, raking her slick tongue up the length of Enfys’s exposed thigh, gripping her rear and kissing ever so close to her sex. It forced the woman to reel again; Enfys wondered if she’d ever get release at this rate.</p><p>“Please, Ahsoka...”</p><p>“For what? Use your words,” Ahsoka guided effortlessly, her voice and wispy breath fluttering ever so slightly above the sound of the running water soaking them both.</p><p>“<em>Taste me</em>...” Enfys gave in, relenting into a more submissive nature that she had never felt before. As Ahsoka kissed her thigh, she could sense the trace of curls in her the corners of her lover’s lips, smiling with gleeful ecstasy as she traced her nose a hair’s width away from Enfys’s dripping desire. Her arousal was slicker than slick, begging for Ahsoka to dip her tongue into. Enfys Nest felt the low rumble of a primal and sapphic moan contained within Ahsoka’s beautiful neck, an indulgent symphony within her throat as she widened her jaw again and let her tongue snake into view.</p><p>Enfys breathed, her sigh shuddering as she felt it touching her need – Ahsoka’s tongue felt divine against the sacral centre of her unrelenting want. Enfys’s groin burned with a need and a pleasure unlike anything she’s experienced before with another woman. Her core exploded for Ahsoka, uncontrollable as another drip of her own wetness escaped her folds and onto her lover’s lips. Enfys winced, cursing aloud with feral heat rising up her entire frame. With one hand on her lover’s horns she subtly directed the motion of Ahsoka’s tongue the best she could, still part of her fighting the Togruta for control of her own wet pleasure. The former-Jedi was unmovable, gripping Enfys’s perky bottom tightly in response. It was her silent way of holding Enfys and affirming her dominance over the younger girl – ‘You’re mine right now; let me decide how I taste you and where.’</p><p>Ahsoka eased herself into a routine, a passionate display around her eager and no doubt experienced tongue working her way around her lover’s entrance, coaxing her again and again to moan. Surprisingly Enfys could hardly stop herself anymore. She wasn’t loud, not out of complete control as she felt wet sensation wrapping and twisting all around her flowering desire, but every time she felt the tip of Ahsoka’s experience touching her in a new area of her blossom, she had to wince and whimper as she clutched her chest. Each breast swelled and gripped back, her nipples erect and peaking between her fingers like glorious peaks on her mountainous body. Water continued to river its way down her form, glistening her earthy and clay-shaded flesh, making her look like bubbling pottery before the kiln.</p><p>Beading arousal dripped from Enfys’s folds, a hearty and sweet sucre upon Ahsoka’s lips and tongue as she worked her way around the entrance before her. She couldn’t stop, Enfys could feel ravenous fervour take a hold of her lover’s lips as she tasted more and more. When the faculty of soft penetration felt its way to Enfys’s mind, knowing Ahsoka was drinking her deeper, she could hardly keep still. The marauder jolted, sliding up and down the bulkhead wall; the Togruta had to grip her bottom tightly to keep her still, immediately wanting to overload her lover. She parted Enfys’s thighs even wider and slipped between them.</p><p>“W-What are you doing? Stars...” Enfys breathed.</p><p>“Shhhh, keep still. You taste so good,” Ahsoka whispered back, her tongue spreading and covering more of the area of Enfys’s sex as if it was split.</p><p>Suddenly she felt that same wet and wondrous sensation around between her legs, rounding back and tasting her rear entrance. With her slick and dreamy appendage, Ahsoka forced another joke through the younger woman. It was a foreign sensation that Enfys really had never been exposed to before, but as Ahsoka’s had massaged her way through the plump flesh of her athletic bottom, while still purring and brushing around her luscious lips, the half-Mandalorian could sense she was liking it. The further Ahsoka took this line of pleasure, her hands gently guiding Enfys to close her eyes and ride out the ecstasy, the more she was inclined to let it flow. Ahsoka’s tongue really was a dream before long. The Togruta’s hand returned to between her lover’s thighs, finding her unhooded and daring clit, a little bit bigger than usual from the pure and raw pleasure bubbling around her needing want. Enfys could tell her breath began to worsen, grow hoarse from the toll her core was now playing on her body rising up. Ahsoka’s fingers, her body, her tongue, all of the above were slowly killing her; each played it own distinguishable part in the Togruta’s sensual dance with her partner’s pleasure. Enfys could discern one from another, and precisely where Ahsoka touched her on her own body. Her anus clenched every so often when her lover moved her hands a touch, or when she winced from the surprisingly beautiful sensation of a tongue slipping and rimming around her rear entrance, but the Togruta eased her gently back.</p><p>She never thought she would garner such pleasure from that area of her skin. After a while she did cry out, Ahsoka’s thumb flicking back and forth across her beading pearl and stirring the wetness of the cusp of her folds. Ahsoka hummed and giggled back into her skin.</p><p>“I thought so,” she whispered, a powerful sentiment before further glazing Enfys’s rear with her tongue some more.</p><p>“Shut... Shut up... Stars...”</p><p>“You love it,” Ahsoka called her out, knowing full well she was right. It was as if they were still of one mind, Ahsoka probing Enfys’s inner desire as she did with her fingers at the same time. She could anticipate her wants and needs, knew just how to touch her still. Enfys was helpless against it, breathing high and ragged breaths as she continued to clutch her breast.</p><p>Ahsoka removed herself from around Enfys’s rump and returned to her front, kissing her clitoris beautifully and sending shockwaves of fire up the length of her lover. She kissed Enfys again, on the supple flesh of her pelted mound, an indulgent intake of the aroma of her fur there before kissing her navel, her belly button ad higher still. The Togruta peppered her lover’s bosom in kisses, taking a nipple betwixt her teeth to twist it and drive Enfys crazy. The half Mandalorian reeled again, recoiling against the gentle and delicate touch her lover held over her.</p><p>They kissed neatly, Ahsoka’s fingers drawing beautiful circles around her lover’s lower lips all the way. She was smiling, a beautiful yet intrinsically mischievous grin as she tantalised beneath Enfys’s body; fingers coaxed and stroked sensual tales around and within the folds of her yearning need. Enfys’s arousal continued to grow, spiralling out of control as she dared to put her hands to Ahsoka again, only one thought on her mind again.</p><p>“Please, Ahsoka...”</p><p>“Please, what?”</p><p>“Make me... Make me come for you,” Enfys begged, her breath wet and dogged as Ahsoka licked a slick line up her neck to her jaw and bit. That ragged and almost swashbuckling renegade style about her that Enfys had seen during her day and half of the Clone Wars’ action came out in full force, lighting up the aged Togruta as if she were a hyperdrive in use.  The eager Ahsoka had an aloof and almost vulpine quality to her severity and connection in this shower that drove Enfys simply wild for her body and her mind. “Place, Ahsoka... I want to come for you... Like I’m yours.”</p><p>Ahsoka almost fought her lover back, raising her leg to her own waist again and holding Enfys’s chest almost forcefully, tracing slender fingers to her collarbone and neck. “You <em>are</em> mine, Enfys... Right now you’re mine.”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>,” Enfys almost burst, almost giving Ahsoka her exposed neck.</p><p>She wanted to hold her lover by her own sex, to feel the burning of her own arousal, but had sectioned herself off for now, sealed her dominant energy away and had agreed to become Ahsoka’s muse. She wanted to be her play thing, her experiment in the shower. Her heart and libido were still aflutter from the attention Ahsoka had paid to her rear, rimming her entrance there and lightly touching her sweetly the same time as her hot need.</p><p>The former-Jedi toyed with the tip of her smallest finger, chewing on the nail between her front teeth and admiring all of Enfys’s form laid bare and open before her. “Open your legs again for me, tell me how bad you want it, Enfys.” Her demands were hot and the marauder was helpless but to oblige her controlling lover.</p><p>Enfys could feel orange hands cupping a supple thigh once again before Ahsoka lunged forward, pressing their chests close together, enough to feel the warm plumpness of her Human lover’s bosom clasped into her own. The Cloud-Rider found her own smile mirroring the now easy and collected grin plastered onto her lover’s face – perhaps for a moment Ahsoka had the same stark realisation as Enfys. That sense of romantic irony or providence that had reunited them together after so many years to end up having beautiful sex in a rundown shower unit aboard a bulky and lived in swoop hauler. Whatever it was that was twinkling in the centre of her galactic blue eyes, Enfys was rapidly falling in love with it again and again.</p><p>This close, she could feel every modicum of Ahsoka’s breath hitting her form, feeling the wondrous sensations of Ahsoka’s fingers tracing the lining of her thighs again, gently retracting up and curling like she was cupping a chalice. That chalice was Enfys, her thighs strong and supple and just perfect to grasp. Ahsoka giggled, letting out a stiff and character-broken chuckle that shed her powerful demeanour and shared with Enfys just how demure she still was. It was enough to fully propel Enfys’s heart into action.</p><p>She lurched forward, feeling Ahsoka’s hands reaching her pulsing and wet arousal as well as her puckered yet yearning rear entrance. She took her chance, reaching for Ahsoka’s own folds and working her own brand of marauder magic. Every trick Enfys had learned about how to beautifully touch and anticipate a woman came to her fingertips, dainty and respectful of her older lover’s form but she just <em>had </em>to touch Ahsoka there. Feeling penetration of daring fingers into both her entry points, Enfys gasped but eased into the sensations, and the rest of the <em>Aerie</em> melted away until she couldn’t think of anything else anymore.</p><p>The last thing she could remember before the scream of orgasm hitting the base of her arousal moments later was Ahsoka mimicking her moan into her kiss, her hands cupping all the secretive and private parts of her body as if she was her play thing. That’s what Enfys dreamed of, and they soon came together as the water overwhelmed their sodden bodies.</p><p>Enfys slipped back into her dreams, and wished she never had to sleep again if it meant seeing Ahsoka next to her.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Hey.”</p><p>Enfys rose and woke the second she heard the word come from Ahsoka’s lips. When the marauder sat up in bed, her frizzed but dry ginger hair a mess and strands flowing down the front of her face, Ahsoka let out a stiff and caught laugh as Enfys flailed.</p><p>“I’m awake, I swear...” She mumbled in the groggy haze she found herself in. Ahsoka’s gentle touch came to her shoulders, exposed through the gaps of her sleepwear tank top.</p><p>They’d slept together, Ahsoka surprisingly forming the smaller link in their chain as she gave the cuddling honours to sleepy Enfys and they had dozed warmly in each other’s embrace as the time of the chrono ticked over into the tens of hours. It had been a nirvana, a heaven to Enfys and Ahsoka both; feeling her soft and beautiful lekku dangle and spread all around her body had made Enfys smile, feeling her cool exterior cling to her warm flesh instinctively. They didn’t move at all but found themselves around her arms, keeping her close. The Cloud-Rider and Jedi hadn’t noticed when they themselves or the other had fallen asleep, now Enfys couldn’t tell what time or day it was at all. The altercation with Saw’s Partisans on Jedha seemed like months ago now.</p><p>“Enfys, I have to leave...” Ahsoka confessed.</p><p>“Did we arrive at the Yavin system already?” The commander checked, looking at the small galaxy map on her bunk-side cabinet top.</p><p>They were entering the Yavin system, with the course of the <em>Aerie</em> still set to orbit the planet of the system’s namesake follow the coordinates Ahsoka provided earlier to the helm crew. Landfall would be on the fourth moon of the large red behemoth, the moon of the far side – that was where the Rebel Stronghold was.</p><p>Ahsoka’s ethereal blue eyes softened a little, her sigh telling but her attention consuming all of Enfys she could see. She brushed back the Cloud-Rider’s hair, admiring her youth, her rugged handsomeness and muscular prowess. The Togruta for once found it remarkable that the small child who had watched her duel Asajj Ventress during the Clone Wars had transformed and survived the turbulent galaxy into this monolithic saint of a woman. Enfys was beautiful even as she looked groggy and sleepless.</p><p>“Something has happened on Scarif, I’ve received word – I think what is about to happen... I can’t hide from it,” the Togruta breathed, her voice a little stalled, as if she was scared of talking at all.</p><p>“What are you talking about?”</p><p>“The Alliance, and the Empire. It’s going to be open war, Enfys,” Ahsoka told her, her confidence washed away and Ahsoka now skinned naked to her emotional bone. Yesterday they were dodging blaster bolts from the renegades of Saw’s Partisans and now Enfys could read the influx of emotion through Ahsoka’s eyes as if she were willing to pour her heart out again. </p><p>Enfys found herself gasping at the prospects of fate shackling themselves to both her and Ahsoka in the trashed up bedroom slowly traversing Yavin. Could war be so close? It suddenly dawned on Enfys, a question she had not stopped to ask herself at all as they were blasting out of Jedha or fooling around in the shower the night before.</p><p>What was going on?</p><p>“Can the Alliance even risk open warfare?” Enfys asked, stepping out of bed and beginning to pace.</p><p>“I’m not sure, Ezra managed to contend with Grand Admiral Thrawn.”</p><p>“Ezra Bridger was a Jedi, with his Jedi Master, and a small army at his back to liberate one planet, Ahsoka,” Enfys countered, her voice a little grave with concern. “We are talking about the whole Empire against the Alliance. You’re the only Force-user left in it... How can Mothma expect to measure up?” She bombarded Ahsoka with questions. She hadn’t intended, but now her mind was racing, looking at the prospect of war as fact. Truly, what <em>did </em>Mothma have? From where Enfys and Saw had been looking from this entire time, it seemed she had consistent dumb luck and too much hope for one woman to know what to do with.</p><p>“We have the Force, Enfys.”</p><p>“The Force abandoned this galaxy nineteen years ago, Ahsoka. When the Jedi...”</p><p>“I know Enfys, I was there.”</p><p>It shocked the Cloud-Rider to the core. She hadn’t been thinking – all of her immediate thoughts were of protecting her saviour, returning the favour, growing weary with worry for her distant safety after seeing her again now. Time was her enemy, and Enfys lost track of what she was saying to her lover.</p><p>“I’m sorry... Ahsoka... I.”</p><p>“Hey, it’s okay,” Ahsoka whispered, seeing the distress in her ally’s eyes. She moved closer, wrapping her arms around the younger Cloud-Rider and embracing Enfys in a warm and feminine cocoon of companionship, trying to melt down her fondness of the marauder into her core. “I know you feel frightened. I can sense it, Enfys...”</p><p>“Don’t tell me you feel any more confident in Mothma’s abilities than I do...”</p><p>“Not in Mon Mothma. Well, yeah, in Mon Mothma, but not just her,” the Togruta confessed, searching deep within herself and recalling the message she’d recovered from Obi-Wan. It was Kanan’s message in truth, but Ahsoka had had the honour of receiving it all the same from the last apprentice.</p><p>Ahsoka parted from the hug, holding Enfys by her wrists and looking at her with all the optimism in the galaxy – she could tell from the look returned to her that all of Enfys’s hope had been gradually sapped from her by the Empire and years of dealing with the stench of the galactic underground.</p><p>“There’s a new hope out there Enfys. There’s someone out there that can beat the Emperor.”</p><p>“How can anyone defeat Palpatine? Not even your Jedi could...”</p><p>“They will, trust me,” Ahsoka smiled, that twinkle returning to her nebula-blue eyes. They sparkled like stars, her skin a supernova. She was as beautiful and ethereal as ever.</p><p>Enfys looked at their hands, her own fingers returning to grip onto Ahsoka’s wrists, and then slipping down to hold her hands. Despite her athletic nature and years of combat, of gripping two lightsabers for the majority of her life, Ahsoka’s hands were so surprisingly smooth, dainty even. She felt softer than Enfys would have ever imagined, both in the shower and out. Her skin felt like gentle rain, her attention oozing out like luscious clouds after a torrential storm. Nest knew she could get lost in those eyes for a short eternity.</p><p>“It won’t be like the Clone Wars, will it?” Enfys knew.</p><p>Ahsoka shook her head neatly, her lekku giving a small wiggle down her bodice. “This one’ll be for keeps, Enfys. One way or another the galaxy will feel the rage of Clone Wars returned upon it a hundred times over.”</p><p>She wanted to say it.</p><p>Enfys knew she felt it, had done since she was a child, since she was nine and Ahsoka had rushed into a Separatist prison on Bakura, a small Padawan aided by her own confidante. They’d duelled Asajj Ventress to defeat and watched her skulk away back to the droids as they had rescued her and her mother, as well as the rest of the Mandalorians from the prison. Ever since then, since spotting beautiful Ahsoka Tano among the Republic forces, Enfys Nest knew she’d fallen madly in love with her, and now she knew she wanted to confess it. It was to be now or never, before Ahsoka had to go back to her Alliance and fight the Empire.</p><p>“Ahsoka...”</p><p>“Yes, Enfys?”</p><p>Words failed her, and in the corner of her eye, Enfys saw how quickly they were approaching Yavin 4. Her thoughts turned to ash in her mind and trapped themselves within her own walls of doubt. She couldn’t; she wanted to with all her might, the Cloud-Rider leader simply couldn’t say it.</p><p>“Whatever you’re about to go do... Please find me once it’s all over, okay?” She cowered.</p><p>Ahsoka smiled, but within her eyes she looked more reserved than ever. “There’s always a spot open for you in the Alliance...”</p><p>“Maybe one day, but my priorities are my family.”</p><p>Enfys almost cried when Ahsoka wrapped her arms around her shoulders and collar again. The Togruta pulled her in for one mighty hug, pouring all of her into it and warming Enfys through to her heart. In Ahsoka she felt all she had before on the bridge of the Venator when Fives had shown her there. She did not want this to be the end but knew it had to be for both of them – if she ever got to see her saviour again, it would be a miracle. No, it would be the Force.</p><p>That, she could say.</p><p>“May the Force be with you, Ahsoka...”</p><p>“May the Force be with you too... my wonderful Cloud-Rider.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She had been summoned to the inner sanctum of the <em>Deception</em>, her Sister’s cloak billowing behind her as he had done the same for Trilla Suduri years ago. That had been one unfortunate series of events on Nur the First Sister had never forgotten to crack a smile at. The rest of the deaths of her order had been unfortunately mismanagements, or outright acts of foul incompetence – the Seventh Sister and Fifth Brother on Malachor were avoidable to say the least. If their assailant was still alive, she’d have been dripping to wet her lightsaber with his blood, but the First Sister knew that time had passed and now he was finally free to pursue new targets as galactic tension rose exponentially.</p><p>Word of the victory over Scarif had reached her Star Destroyer, as well as the report from Lord Vader that he had apprehended the Princess of Alderaan in connection to the whereabouts of the Rebel Stronghold. The First Sister knew of Tarkin’s reputation both before and following the Clone Wars.</p><p>She’d been there first – she’d met him as a Republic officer. First Sister knew his type, knew what he was capable of. The Emperor would have the location of the Rebels’ base within the day. It was only a matter of time before the net fully closed in and the opposition was destroyed with the swiftest impunity. The retribution for the Inquisitorious had finally arrived on the cusp of the horizon. She had never been happier. Her helmet covering her green-skinned face, First Sister dared to chuckle at the thought of it all.</p><p>The Jedi, finally erased.</p><p>Batting her cloak back behind her haunches and breathing within her helmet as the lights dimmed, First Sister knelt at the positioning panel on the ground and bowed. The holographic display of the Emperor blurred into being seconds later.</p><p>“Your Majesty,” First Sister greeted.</p><p>“Inquisitor...” It was how he and Lord Vader addressed every single one of them, how they always had done regardless of their rank and position in the order. Even with the Grand Inquisitor before his fall, each of them had simply called him ‘Inquisitor’, the same treatment was bestowed on her too.</p><p>“My lord...”</p><p>“I have a new assignment for you,” the Emperor breathed, his decrepit form boisterous and somehow still a twisted sense of regal.</p><p>First Sister bowed again, eager to work. “I stand ready to serve you, My Lord.”</p><p>“There has been a disturbance in the Force – an old enemy has arisen once more and must be dealt with before she halts the Empire’s plans, Inquisitor.”</p><p>“<em>She</em>?” So it was true – First Sister <em>had</em> sensed her relating to Jedha. She knew it, nothing could hide that sense, that familiarity, the First Sister could always tell when it was her.</p><p>“A failed apprentice of the Jedi Order... The last remnant of their religion after the demise of Ezra Bridger... One of his own allies,” the Emperor continued; First Sister could almost imagine his voice and breath cascading down to her meek position below him. It never made her feel feeble. She too had known him when he was smooth-skinned politician at the head of a different faction, when he was Chancellor once upon a time ago.</p><p>“I have sensed her, My Lord.”</p><p>“Ahsoka Tano...” He almost barked. “You will find her, Inquisitor, and destroy her.”</p><p>First Sister bowed once again. “It will be done.”</p><p>“Do not allow Lord Vader to discover she still lives. Am I clear?”</p><p>“Perfectly, Your Highness.”</p><p>“Good,” he elongated; the crooks of a smile formed at the corners of her wrinkled and decayed mouth, making him look almost simple but just as deadly as she knew him to be. All of the Inquisitorious had known him to be a masked miasma of death and destruction. Worse than even Darth Vader, their leader. “Destroy Ahsoka Tano and bring peace to Empire...” The Emperor faded and the First Sister needed to remove her visage. Her green Mirialan skin breathed again as she dropped the cold Imperial-black helm to the same jet dark floor. She caught her image looking back at her in the reflection of the black panels. It had been so long since she had seen herself as the girl returning her glance but she knew she had a different name – one Ahsoka Tano would remember more than the First Sister did.</p><p>Looking back at the First Sister were the twisted yellow and red eyes of a twisted and corrupted former-Jedi. In another life she had gone by the name Barriss Offee, apprentice to Luminara Unduli, and she had been told to find and murder the woman she had loved with every fibre of her being.</p><p>Putting the helm back on, she was reduced back into the body of the First Sister.</p>
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